001e e e I also like to thank the community for their participation in determining recogn Tim foring service Andia rri thank you very much I do want super our agenda for comment anyone sign participation Board of Education welcomes our district presidents parents and other interested person to meeting ax emplo a Lang Frank Rossy Jr 63b Saratoga Avenue uh I guess the theme of my comment s will be congratulations and thank you uh we'll start with the congratulations uh the 72% obviously was a resounding victory for the budget last night and Brian is somebody that has to uh put together a budget uh a fraction of the size of the one that you had to put together I uh know that it was no small feat last night to have that kind of vote uh approve
002of what you put forward and congratulations on that congratulations uh Jason uh as board president uh you know not everybody will agree with you 100% of the time you and I will disagree on things here and there but it's a good consistency a good uh leadership that you show and I think that's what's appreciated by a lot of people out there congratulations on your re-election uh faia uh congratulations to her as well in a very uh tough race there uh and Tim as I said earlier I just want to expound on it uh you know congratulations on what you've done here because a lot of people will go on social media Etc and complain complain complain but very few will step forward to actually run and to try to do something about it you did
003you won you were here you've done some great things in your time here don't take it as a loss it's a victory through and through for you as well and thank you for everything you've done to try to make the bals spa Central School District and our community better in that time the thanks here comes from that continued relationship that the village and the school district has and it's not just a one-way street with me posting about Athletics and events and stuff like that it's not just that comes in the other direction as well uh case in point as you may have seen Congressman tono had a funding opportunity uh he selected 15 communities for funding opportunities uh from the federal level that he'll be pushing for over the next months and the last minute
004uh we kind of saw that there's an extension of time allowed for this and I reached out to our grant and funding uh Pro that we uh work with uh she was on vacation but she said okay go get this letter get that letter and go get your school district to sign off on something when it comes to sidewalks and that was what our funding opportunity was for for sidewalks the ada8 plan that we have uh right now and reached out and reached out to Ed Martin I was like Ed I don't know if I can get Duke could do this in time but uh what do you think and superintendent duok was reaching out to me by text message right away to say he was going to get something out to us and we
005are uh in Prime position right now three and 3/4 million dollar possibility obviously could be less but it's going to be hopefully something and I'm going to be in Aly on Tuesday at a press conference with Congressman tono to defend that and to make sure he's got the ammo he needs when he goes back to Capitol Hill to uh try to get that money for us so thank you very much that's just one example of the continuing relationship between the village and the school district and I hope that we continue that again thanks for everything thank you very much for your Student Government report atat thank you are there any questions for our student government representative no well we are um thrilled that uh the good weather is coming with the end of the year
006and um have a wonderful end of the year and we look forward to all these activities okay you may excuse yourself next our agenda is approval of minutes may I have a motion to approve the minutes for the May 8th 2024 public hearing so moved second any amendments or additions not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions minutes are approved I have a motion to approve the minutes for the May 8th 2024 regular meeting so moved second any amendments or additions not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions minutes for May 8th 2024 regular meeting are approved now we have our superintendent report thank you very much um tonight we have three um building goal updates uh Malta excuse me Milton Terrace first then Malta ab and then the
007Middle School we're having some projector problems so they're still going to present and then we will post the um slide decks uh to the website so that you can see uh the slide decks as we go and I'll share those with the board um in my update this week thank you Dr Dua and members of the board it's been a great year at Milton Terrace and we're excited to share some of our work with you tonight I'd like to thank our building leadership team members Sheila McIntyre and Miranda Aldridge for being here tonight with me to update you on our work I just want to note that this is our 16th year presenting as Milton Terrace Elementary and Sheila has presenting with me for 16 years this is her last time because she's going to
008be retiring and we're not talking about retirement tonight but I do need to just mention that because that's a a long a good long go of it when I said who wants to present she's like I have to it's my last time so anyways um so as always we always start with our district mission and goals even at the elementary school our goal is for a meaningful diploma for all students and we keep that goal in mind even beginning in kindergarten we were very fortunate to have another strong leadership team this year at Milton Terrace we had 16 me Members representing us every grade level and every bargaining unit was on our team we had full committee meetings every month where we reviewed the previous meetings notes and reviewed um we reviewed those at the
009beginning of each meeting and then we had subcommittee meetings um as identified by the team when we built our goals um we start with our district priorities we then um every year we end our year as a Milton Terrace BLT by identifying areas that we want to focus on for the next year so we take the district priorities combine that with those um areas of focus that I mentioned and then we take data from the beginning of the year and we combine those all to build our goalss and we had a lovely slide to show you which we will be sending you I'll now turn it over to Sheila you good evening um our first Milton Terrace goal is in the area of family and Community engagement and as a team we talked about wanting
010to give our families information about our District's curriculum resources and ways that they can help their students from home and in conjunction with our PTA we hosted two family nights that were very successful we haven't hosted these in a very very long time and we were thrilled at the response that we got and the families were thrilled as well at both nights our families received bags of activities that our students can do with their families at home to Showcase their learning in November we hosted a family night where over 60 families joined us for an evening of math games and information on our programs in February that's when we had our family reading night and we had a great turnout and families joined us in conjunction with our PTA for a pizza dinner each family
011left with a book and more activities for the families to practice at home and Alive our therapy dog joined us for this event and here are some pictures um our second Milton Terrace goal was on chronic absenteeism and I know that's on the minds of everybody um in recent years and this year we established a committee an attendance committee that included our school nurse a third grade teacher our principal and a reading teacher the group met five times and we started by identifying our chronically absent students and then we had confidential convers Sation where we were able to identify individualized interventions based on each family's specific needs for example some families were able to identify barriers to coming to school and um we got them signed up for counseling services through Northern Rivers each morning
012our school counselor Regina Murphy would reviews our attendance list and makes phone calls or calls meetings based on our students needs and this is a goal that we will continue with for next school year hi our third M terce goal was to or is to increase the growth on I ready end ofe assessments our work on this goal included data meetings where Dr Cher and Mrs Skelly met um with our grade level teams to review data and to help identify our interventions um we did have a nice slide to Showcase this I'll kind of review what it looks like so when you see it so after our midyear testing um the number of students at tier three or read went from 14 % of our students to only 8% and the number of students testing
013on grade level went from only 35% to 55 of our students and we expect to see the number of students on grade level increase a great deal by the end of the year um we also implemented a new instructional model for tier or for tier 2 support and a few of our grade levels in grades 2 and three we notice majority of students need additional support in understanding syllable types and patterns in grade two it was more of a significant decoding concern and in grade three was a spelling concern so using all of our classroom teachers and interventionists um together we were able to create a model um using the interventionists that we um already had to meet the students needs here are the interventionists we pushed in um into the classrooms and co-taught um
014the intervention lessons to bigger groups alongside the classroom teacher instead of pulling out small groups and the benefit was teachers gained more knowledge and confidence when teaching these particular skills and interv I ists were able to better understand the challenges that the classroom teachers were experiencing um we are really hoping to see positive results um from these changes in our end of the year data in June as well um another part of this goal was for us to create a common building substitute template um to make it easier for substitutes to visit our building and to ultimately provide our students with a more streamlined instruction um our BLT team identified a number of items um to include in this template including a checklist for teachers of items to leave which parts of the curriculum to
015prioritize um for um for teaching putting all of the curriculum on Google Slides um and sharing it in the Google um sub Drive um this included Specific Instructions for signing in um for the technology resources um we actually have our team finalizing this template this week um so it'll be ready for use um to start the school year in September so our last goal for the year was in the area of mtss mul teered systems of support in this school we really wanted to focus on providing even more support for our students in the area of social emotional learning as you might recall our Milton Terrace social worker and school psychologist Eric galding and Colleen German authored a program called courageous classroom skill of the week we use that in our self-contained classrooms at Milton
016Terrace so we did a pilot this year teaching the first 10 lessons of that program in order to provide a strong foundation for when all of our classroom teachers begin teaching second step it really Serv served as an enhancement to our second step program the 10 introductory lection lessons explicitly teach self-regulation and coping skills they include information like how to do a full body scan identify your feelings select a strategy to help calm your body and get ready for learning to measure our progress we gave our teachers a survey at the beginning of the year and um at the beginning of June we're going to give them that exact same survey survey to measure our progress we do plan to use information that we get from that to support our program um next year anecdotally
017we've seen great results from even our youngest students using the program for example we have one kindergarten student who before he gets ready to learn you might see him jumping up and down on his carpet square and when he's asked he says my body feels like it's at a five so I'm doing a few turtle jumps to get ready for learning um on a separate note one of our tier 2 interventions at Milton Terrace is the primary project that's for our youngest students that's a program that's really meant to give some of our students who are a little bit under the radar some um play therapy to help to bring them their confidence up and this year we um applied for National certification for the primary project it included a pretty extensive application process and
018two site visits and we found out a few weeks ago that we have received National certification as a um National primary project school so we're very excited about that as we look to next year we'd like to focus on connecting our work with family engagement to our work with improving attendance and then we'd like to continue to support our students growth in the area of behavior and academics and that's it any questions just a real quick question do you see attendance like getting worse or like better like it stayed about the same I believe just over the past year yeah but we have done some really good work with a lot of our individual families um I was talking to our um school counselor today and she you know she was talking about really hooking
019them up with resources outside of our Community we've been able to hook them up with Debbie dug and our District's homeless coordinator we've just been able to really provide them with individualized support for one family Regina went out to the bus stop for two weeks and got the student on the bus every day because there was some anxiety there like we've really just you know and this will be a continued goal but we're really just kind of starting to identify and get our feet wet with it but it's certainly something that we expect to improve yeah that kind of actually F into my question like the individual um meetings and interventions like do you feel like it had a uh positive impact over all I really do and it was it was interesting after our
020first meeting we just identified the students and just talked about it as a small group and one of the things was talking to some of the classroom teachers of some of our students with the worst attendance and some of the classroom teachers were not aware because it was the beginning of the year so they didn't know what had happened in the prior year so even just having them have that awareness anytime they reach out to the family was really helpful the pilot program uh what ages did you do that or what grades did you do that with all grades you did that in all grades and so are you going to continue that we would like to yes it was yes well you'll find out in June when you yes collect the data but you
021feel it was it's being successful we really do um so we've also we've got some of our um co- te pairs um watching each other do it so that we can continue to build the our teachers confidence and and work in that area great thank you and to see the students use the strategies and use the language it's really pretty incredible to see that's great thank you thanks I sorry really quick question about that um when you had the interventionist and the teacher pairing just want to make sure I'm understand so they're coming into the larger classroom and doing the skill-based kind of yes coaching or teaching at that point so we have a diff it's called the differentiation block within our schedule and during that time um T historically kids are pulled out for
022intervention but during this time we we would take the grade level and split we tested all of them and split the whole whole grave level up according to their needs so for example the kids with you know who needed vce pattern would go to one class and then and so then the uh reading teachers pushed and co-taught those intervention lessons right in the classroom to the huge groups of students and like Miranda said it was really great because it was good for each to kind of walk in each other's shoes and and also to you know build their skills in that area thanks any more questions thank you so much thank you up next we have MTA AB principal Johnson good evening everyone uh it is a pleasure to be here this evening um I'm
023excited to share with you um a lot of the work that we have done at Malta Avenue this year pertaining to our building goals um and you know I'm going to start with um what we always start with at multi Avenue which is our shared purpose and our vision um we you know our our goal is always to make sure that we're providing our students with an excellent education um we always want to make sure that we're thinking about student and staff Wellness um and then lastly really thinking about making sure all of our students staff members and families feel a strong sense of belonging um and feel part of our community um you know our our values our two core values at Malta Avenue are excellence and Community um we those really ground Us
024in the work that we do um and our building goals really allow us to operationalize those values so our first goal um it seems like so long ago now um that I presented back in the fall uh was uh surrounding what we call the malta away um and our goal um that we set in September was Ensure ing that by this point in the school year our students are able to clearly articulate what it means to follow the malta away and their behaviors also demonstrate what it means to follow the malta way um as a reminder we teach the malta way um to our students through our social emotional learning curriculum through our schoolwide expectations um as well as our character education program um we had quite a few objectives and action steps related to
025this goal um I willon review all of those action steps but I'm just going to share a little bit of the work that we've done uh to help us um reach the goal that we set in the fall um so we started the year um explicitly teaching our schoolwide expectations to all of our students um and our Focus was those common areas so what student Behavior should look like in the cafeteria in the halls in the bathrooms um just to make sure that there were those clear expectations from the start um for students who maybe needed reminder or retach we always provided review lessons with them um to really help them be clear on those expectations so that went very well this fall um next we um you know our our school counselor this year
026um really focused on creating classroom contracts with all of our students um in the classrooms um and this was really a great opportunity um for her and for our teachers to talk to students about um you know the the way essentially the options for them and what we shared with students is that um part of being a multi Avenue student um and thinking about the students in your classroom you can either be friends or you can be classmates um but we don't have enemies when we're in class um and so we really talk to students about those options um and what it really looks like to be a good friend and to be a classmate um all of our students signed these contracts um and that's been helpful for us throughout the year um to
027refer to those contracts as needed um we also in OCT October um our school librarian and our counselor collaborated to create uh some uh very fantastic and exciting lessons for our students utilizing a variety of texts um on the importance of daily acts of kindness and the power that can have um in a community um and we also um use that time to teach students about what it means to be an upstander um and how that is one of our expectations um in being part of the multi Avenue Community uh and then in fourth for our fourth and fifth graders this winter in Spring um our school counselor and I went into each classroom um and with our older students really talked about what it means to follow the malta away as it pertains to
028how we treat one another um and what that looks like additionally we talk to students about the dignity for all students act um and the importance of ensuring that we don't have bullying in our school right we were really talking to them about the why behind that um that we want all of our students to feel safe um we want all of our students to feel a strong sense of belonging so that they can all learn um so those were really rich conversations with our older students um and and seem to really help as we continue to define the multiway I'm going to move on to our goal number two which is related to classroom management and classroom culture um our goal was to ensure that all of our staff members had a chance to
029collaborate and talk about effective classroom management strategies um and additionally um could collaborate and share out best practices relating to building positive classroom cultures um so we spent uh quite a few meetings uh staff meetings and grade level meetings um allowing our staff members to share those practices as many of you know um we have a very talented and Veteran staff at Malta Avenue um all all of them have wonderful experiences and expertise to share um so it was a great experience allowing us all to talk through those strategies that we utilize um and with was certainly very helpful for our newer teachers as they're starting to build their classroom management strategies um and think about their classroom management Vision um additionally uh in the fall we created a padlet as a school Community uh
030which is essentially a website that all staff members can contribute to um and they were able to staff members um added specific intentional strategies that they currently use to build a positive classroom culture there's so many other great things too but I'm going to keep moving for the sake of time um I had an example of the padlet that was created this fall um but I know that will be shared with you um in the coming days our next goal um was related to curriculum enhancement um similar to what the Milton terrorist group presented on our goal was to ensure that our grade level teams um at our building level and districtwide had the opportunity to talk about um our bookworm's Ela curriculum and specifically Focus on what is going very well in areas that
031we would like to enhance by grade level um so we had quite a few District level grade level meetings as well as building level grade level meetings where teams met to talk about um the components of the curriculum um that really were quite effective and the other components that needed some enhancement um one specific area that our grade levels focused on districtwide was enhancing the writing component of bookworms um and then grade levels in uh during the winter midwinter really uh work together to create specific resources um lesson plans and strategies to boost that writing instruction which will go into play in the fall um and then this spring so we had District Representatives who sat um and worked on those district-wide committees and then the spring that was shared out with all of our
032staff members um my next two goals um our two goals were focused on academic growth and academic achievement um we are eagerly awaiting our end ofe assessments um as soon as those are finished we will know if we if we did indeed meet those goals one goal was related to um our student growth as measured by I in both Ela and math and our goal was really to increase um for each grade level to increase their percentage of students who meet or exceed their typical growth on IR um and then our achievement goal was related to oral reading fluency and our goal uh was to ensure that 85% of our students meet those goals so again we don't have the data quite yet um so I'm just going to talk briefly about how we've continued
033to have um great discourse um pertaining to these specific areas and I'll share a little bit about our middle of year data um so we've had ongoing meetings um as grade levels where we've taken a look um at all different types of data um we our our older grade levels reviewed our state assessment scores from last year year um we Ed Tableau Software to analyze Trends um to take a look at where our students did very well in other areas that we're going to continue to work on um we also reviewed at different points of the Year our I ready data and our Dibbles data um and you know again really thought through um and created action plans to support some of our students who were struggling um at the middle of the year when
034we had those assessments um our teams met with uh Kathleen Skelly and with our curriculum coach again to look at those Trends um our third fourth and fifth grades spent a half day with the team taking a look at those Trends and then had an additional half day where they created action plans to meet the needs of our students oh and I had it a I had a beautiful uh graphic from I ready um I'll talk a little bit about it I'm excited for you to see it um dur at the when we received our middle of year scores um when we go to I ready um it has this lovely group um that shows four quadrants um the upper left shows grade levels who are um performing at a low level but have high
035growth our bottom left of the quadrant shows our uh our grade levels to are performing low below grade level and also have low growth bottom right um is students who are grade levels who are performing at a high level but have minimal growth and then the upper right um is high performance and high growth and the amazing thing is for our reading data all of our grade levels are in that upper right right hand quadrant which is phenomenal um so our kids are making really really great growth and they're also achieving at high levels um so again this trajectory is is exciting to see and we anticipate meeting these two goals by the end of the year in the next few weeks our final goal um is uh relates directly to diversity equity and inclusion
036um our goal is to um increase the sense of community and belonging for our students staff members and our community members um this is a goal that is near and dear to um the hearts of Staff members at Malta Avenue um we are a community school we love that as much as possible we want our doors to be open to our community members and we want we want all of our stakeholders to really feel that sense of belonging um so we've as I mentioned earlier we've had a lot of discussions about creating those positive classroom cultures um cultures in which students really feel as they belong in that classroom and within that school um we also in November surveyed our third fourth and fifth graders uh to get just a ballpark of their sense of
037belonging how they perceive their sense of belonging in our school building um and then our our student support team used that initial data to have some more informal conversations with students to gather more Street data um to talk to them about their experiences at Malta Avenue and then we're excited to use that information to really think about our long-term goal of ensuring that all of our students have that strong sense of belonging um and then I was going to end with a great slide um pertaining to all the events that we have that we plan intentionally at Malta Avenue to engage our community members um we've had some great events this year already our back to school block party um we've had family movie Nights we had super science Saturday um all kinds of of
038incredible things um and uh I'm going to put in a plug for a really amazing event coming up we have Tamala and Beyond which is June 7th um it is just an exceptionally beautiful evening um where we have a variety of performers we have our Student Art Show we have food Cuisine it's uh incredibly well attended or has been historically um so I would love to invite all of you to attend that and while I'm putting in plugs our drama club uh is presenting or doing their drama club performance next week the 30th and 31st so I will provide you all with an invite um to that um and I will well I will end there um thank you so much for your time this evening um any questions questions from the board members yes
039what are they perform in next week say that again what are they perform Aristocats kid Aristocats kids Aris aats kids cats there we go got it tonight yes awesome it's going to be fantastic I can't tonight not not this evening Brian but thank you Tim um I have a question is there a sense this year that uh the kindergarteners are either more ready for school and learning or less ready than school and learning than in Prior years it's an interesting question I think this year um our kindergarten students have done very well um you know I would say they came in um having more School Readiness skills um you know many of them have the ability came in with the ability to be able to sit and focus at least for short periods of time
040on instruction um so I think this year was was certainly an improvement um from the past couple of years thank you and I'm very heartened to hear your discussion around the Dei initiatives and just talking about the sense of belonging because I think that's really something that we want to stress in our district is that you know all this talk under the umbrella and all that is just the the point of that is to make sure that our students all of them feel like they belong here absolutely than for yeah absolutely any other questions comments thank you so much all right I'm just going to leave some flyers with everybody please our last presentation tonight are our interm co-principals from the Middle School Mr Mueller and Miss bolster thank you as we're listening to the
041two elementaries uh give their presentation uh there's a lot of common themes which is good that shows that we have a lot of uh strong K12 goals in K12 alignment um but here at the middle school when we presented back in September 20th our motto I'm good so far can't see got yeah without there the reading glasses I don't have them today um so our our motto was a village of friends uh and it's been throughout the year of trying to get that Community uh and we we presented our goals on September 20th we had the three areas we had academic structures IB structures and climate and culture so our first goal was academic structures and how we're going to build those and make them stronger so the different things that we did uh we
042implemented formative checks in all the content areas so every two weeks the content teachers gave the same formative check um and then we focused on those skills we Matt to talk talk about them in data groups and try to uh make sure we're finding out what our weaknesses and what we need to do to improve so we started that and then I continued with a mid-year assessment well with some of those things to really make sure we're getting Mastery on some of those topics um we also are right now as we're getting towards the end of the year strengthening our final exams rigor was big for us um and really working to make those meaningful uh and rigorous to prepare them for their next step in the high school when the exams really matter for
043their graduation uh we also talked about tier one tier two and tier three interventions a big thing in our team meetings and our department meetings was strengthening our tier one uh strategies so we worked a lot with those to to Really uh perform better in the classroom and we also worked on our tier two and our tier three strategies as well um in putting those in place to make sure we have good systems uh in math in ela now um our goal was to 85% of our kids increase one year and I ready going with the I ready data so really to make it you know when we look at the data and we have it all nice and done green a kids on grade level yellow one year below and red is two years
044are below you know so we've only done mid year and we still have end of the year but we with showing the visual the really way to to see it very easily is we want to get bigger in green Less in red Less in red and our our our data shows that right now mid that we've increased in the green we're decreasing in the red and we're hoping at the end of the year to continue that Trend in the right direction did it without seeing so he needs glasses to see and I need to take mine off to read thank you all for L us speak tonight uh the second goal that we had is in line with the academic structures but it was targeted more in terms of the IB structures our goal in
045the beginning of the year was to have each of our departments um complete six IB units from start to finish and to also increase our community project participation both among students and staff um that is not lost we know that we are not continuing down that path but that work is not lost it was never a canned program it was very much a a framework that we used and it provided us with means to really reflect on our practices and so that is not lost and we will carry that forward we saw gains this year in community project and the fact that increased the student participation by 10 we went from 20 to 30 students and the number of teachers who volunteered increased as well we had four volunteer teachers this year Andrew and I
046had the pleasure since we were the co-principals to sit through them in their presentations and it was just amazing to see the kids take that ownership and growth and what does that really show it shows what we're all trying to do in this in this District we're trying to raise them to be Civic Learners and for the rest of their lives which they really did we have a wonderful um partnership with our community and we are honoring the students tomorrow at The Ripe Tomato they'll have their little recognition party for all the hard work they did there are many of you in the room whove been Dr duok you've been to quite a few presentations that they put on so the good news is that um when I'll talk a little bit towards the end
047more about our third goal I don't believe that that's going to completely go away either and I don't believe that our staff wants it to also in terms of goal number two around those IB structures but really about curriculum and instruction we wanted to as Andrew talked about raise the Mastery of student learning so we in increase the amount of collaboration we've had with the high school with some vertical alignment uh social studies in particular has done a lot of it because we're trying to assist them with the Seal of Civic Readiness so there's been a lot of conversations in that department Alone um other conversations ironically enough you might take for granted but um we were taking great pride in doing so much work online with our students using the Chromebooks and having them
048participate in those on online platforms yet hearing from our colleagues at the high school the kids therefore were losing out on knowing how to fill in the bubbles sheets they needed for Regions and also how to handw write so things you kind of think you take for granted that you're doing always the best but when you get into that knit and grit with your colleagues you really learn a lot more um and so then our third goal was going to move into culture and climate which you wanted to speak can you see that though yeah sure we're good we're good it's it's really good data so I want to make sure he can the um so our culture and climate um the things that we are we're talking about the Civic uh student Civic development
049PTA and community relations BLT work and also the chronic absenteeism um so as far as we really wanted our kids to be consistently demonstrate respectful responsible and safe ready to learn behaviors um so we really did that by um teaching the kids more about what they need to do and and teaching them the rules we take it for Grant gred that the kids just know how to do things um we really spent more time this year teaching the kids the rules um we and we came back to it quite often to remind the kids of the rules we also sent out a Student Success guide to all the parents so they were very clear of what the expectations were in our school and also the really big thing for us was getting more teacher bu
050and to be more consistent so um the teachers were more consistent um making sure we're enforcing the rules uh and we also have two amazing Deans who help us with that as well um and really one of our really when we're looking at the data we compared last year's uh discipline data from first day of school till May 14th same thing this year to compare apples to apples uh in a lot of our our numbers in the right direction uh our overall referrals and dispositions have decrease since last year and some of the ones that we wanted to point out our in school suspensions have dropped 9% our out of school suspensions have decreased 17.2% big one for us electronic devices kids they distract them especially at the middle level and it's not helping our
051education process by any means we've decreased our electronic uh devices infractions by 41.2% um so that's huge by a lot of the the hard work that we put in and our teachers put in uh to get make that happen our student to- student referrals were down 17.4% another big one late to class you have 60 minutes we're there we have to maximize that time our late to class referrals were down 51.2% um in the amount of kids that we had to bring to Dr duk's uh office for superintendent's hearing the superintendent's hearings for us decreased 71.4% from last year to this year so I think it's a lot of that goes to the hard work of everybody in the building uh being on the same the same mindset because we spent a lot of time
052with the teachers of coming up with the rules it wasn't just here they are we spent a lot of time working so we're all in it together and we all bought into it and we got everybody's feedback which is really important so we're really proud of that and then we're and we're also then sending kids up to the next level that are more prepared to focus on academics and not deal with some of the behavior things obviously that's our goal good I'm glad you did that thank you the other piece to that is not just going over the rules and the consequences and discipline to it but then also rewarding the kids for their positive behavior so we really have done a nice job focusing on that in my opinion I would have you'll see
053some really nice slides of the kids enjoying them eles but the important piece is that we honor kids for their academic success but we also want to honor them for their civic success being safe responsible and respectful so in our school we are able to um through a report card the teachers were able to score the kids on a responsibility score one through four in addition to their academics and the other comments they may give them if a student earns an average of 3.6 for that responsibility score then they are their student ID is validated and we call it a Scotty card the recognition that kids get from from that used to just be a free hall pass or maybe a reduction to a dollar when we had a school dance and what we've done
054instead is now changed it to Celebration so every quarter when there's that academic principles breakfast going on the week before or after there's the Scotty celebration and we're honoring the kids for those good behaviors and they come to the cafeteria the courtyard the library and they play games we've been able to invest over the years through the kind hearts of PTA and some um other grants and some other monies we have um do we have a plethora of things for the kids you should see them playing chess they absolutely love it there's an old game where you put a card on your forehead and they had to describe it um they honestly like going to the library and just getting out to books talking to one another and of course they love spike ball can
055jam cornhole um we do have Mario Kart for the kids any electronic game we let them play through that's dance is a big one too yeah it has to be a group one it's not an individual so they love the Mario Kart and then the dance dance or J dance they absolutely love it teachers come down and participate with them as well so it's been a really great thing and the other last piece to that one is that um our counselors also have pushed into classroom so in addition to us as the administration and the Deans reiterating and teaching those lessons that we want them right if you can't teach math you help them remediate we do that here and then our counselors push in and do more of that social emotional learning too they
056push into the classrooms at each grade level about eight to 10 times if they can get it all in the year and they do that component on uh self- perseverance self-regulation and then more social emotional piece so it wasn't just us harping on the kids and the negativity of consequences but really teaching them along the way so we're super proud of that goal the other part of culture and climate goal number three that we had was to increase our communication with PTA and the community as a whole we would say that we've really increased our PTA communication luckily because the PTA president is in our building uh but it has really offered up those great opportunities for her and PTA to see what the kids need what the teachers need and then to have that
057time to talk with talk with us um a couple of the things they have done is they created and initially they had a banner for kids that they wanted to carry through with them till they graduated but after her being in the building for a year she saw the importance of having the kids buy into it so this year they had a student competition and the kid created the artwork for that Banner that will carry with them from their eighth grade recognition ceremony to their High School graduation it was Kaden ffield who won that there's a cute little picture of him when we get to it um they also are are phenomenal at helping create those team bonding experiences they were able to help contribute to each grade level all going on field trips this
058year which is a first for us in a long time that every single grade has had one sixth grade went to spa for one of their performances um seventh grade went to a ropes course at Thatcher Park and 8th grade did their trip to um to Boston so there's some pictures for you to see that as well the other piece to our climate and culture goal was being able to really increase collaboration and communication with with our faculty and our students we achieved that by giving out student and staff surveys well we'll get to the students we put out a staff survey um to to measure how they were feeling and thinking and not just about IB but the Middle School philosophy in general we had about 80 80 teachers take it um it wasn't
059mandatory we were hoping to get that about that much because we have 120 total staff or so so that really was a good turnout we asked them five main questions we asked them if they believed in a common curriculum at the content level and grade level of that content we asked if they believed in a common assessment method for Department grading a systematic way to approach grading so the teachers weren't off within one grade level we asked the same type of question regarding their summi of Assessments if they should be in line with one another and weighted and graded the same in the same format we asked them if they believed in the value of service learning back to when I was talking to you about that Community project um if they believed in the
060importance of ser service learning some way somehow for students again helping get ready for the high school Civic Readiness and the fifth question we really honed in on was if they believed in a common framework for our building regarding character education the lowest number of NOS on any one of those questions was nine out of about 80 who took it so we we take that as a real success and we're hoping that that is something we can hand over to our new new principal come July to help guide and shape us for the following year currently we're also working with our BLT we just had another meeting today now that we have those questions from our staff we want to ask them from our students and we don't want to just ask the students do
061you like school we really want to get into things that will help us change and make it more focused for them so we are almost done with our survey for the students we hope to put that out during um our testing day so we're not taking away from instruction but when the kids finish their exams early if they do they've got that time to complete this survey and I'm really looking forward to seeing that data and the last piece of of our goals for culture and climate had to do with chronic absenteeism which you've heard as a district initiative and many other buildings um I am actually very very pleased to see our numbers for those of you who don't know chronic absenteeism is defined by missing 10% of your school days which is about
06218 but I ran the numbers at 20 or more school days back in 1819 before we had that lovely pandemic our chronic absenteeism rate was 88.5% in the middle school I am proud to say that when I looked at the years after skipped a couple but in 2122 we were at 25% made sense we were still in that area where people were missing school last year we got it down to 14.7 and this year we're at 12.9% so we're definitely targeting and going in the right direction what we have done differently this year is we really took a look at attendance works as a program and they have what's called an attendance playbook for those of us in this field it's very similar to an mtss field book where um if you have a concern
063like the students missing this and we think it's because here are the steps you can do type of Playbook uh and we worked with our counselors on that we couldn't do any of this without the help of our counselors and social workers they are absolutely critical but from that work we made up individual Student Success plans that when we have our parent meetings with the students they get a a concrete plan with them that has visuals about what they can do it helps them identify their help people both immediately in school maybe at home like it takes it from all different lenses and it really help the kids and parents have that visual because I don't think that they had that before when we just talked about you have to improve attendance and then internally
064what we did was create a monitoring document just for us and the counselors really to have a whole file on how many times have you met with a parent what did you do what was the outcome what questions and then we have a set list of questions to ask the kids so you really get like Sarah was talking about to that street data of why they're missing or for us unfortunately sometimes the kids are home taking care of younger kids who aren't in school so really getting that to those reasons so that when we're making plans with the kids they can buy into it and really see that value of course we take the help from Parsons Northern Rivers any other agencies that we can we're not shy to do that um but I think
065those other two components really are what changed things for us this year anything to add no any questions yes I just want to say thank you to both of you being co-principals is not easy it really shows how well you two work together and I'm very thankful for that and really appreciate you to stepping up to that um but I also would like to just say my two cents that I would absolutely love to see the community project stay in some way shape or form of a class or something um the past two years it has been a pleasure talking to the kids about their projects and I have truly appreciated that um as a community member going and hearing about what they have to say um and it's it really shows maturity level of
066the students and what they're interested in I think it's a value to the school thank you you're not alone a lot a lot of our staff feel that way too we just have to find a way uh with regards to Chronic absenteeism are you able to provide any like specific interventions or practices that are done to address the issue that you see have been working well it's so individualized if you get you have to know the kid know the family and come up brainstorm with a group which we do we meet with with the the guidance and us and to brainstorm specifically for that kid to say one thing for every I don't think really works a lot of those things are in the Playbook but it's really get if you know your kids you
067know why they're absent and then you can put interventions in and I think that's a big thing is knowing your kids inside out and knowing the families I think we've also had better collaborations amongst ourselves as ministration I look back there to Kathleen and knowing to reach out and our counselors do that too now that Elementary has school counselors so it's a more family system atic approach we're not always calling them and then they're getting a call from that school and that school and they've gotten five and they feel like we're harping on them we're we're really just trying to help right so that's been a nice collaboration that has made some gains too excellent and then also uh to add into what uh Katie was mentioning I would love to see the continuation of
068the community project you know it's great for student involvement and participation um you know building that sense of community and you know I would love to to see in the coming years thank you any other questions or comments thank you both thank you thank you that concludes the superintendent report okay thank you committee reports yes the um policy committee met met tonight and um our chairperson um hly Barker Flynn was absent so I took over for her um Dr du is going to be doing an audit over the summer and he is looking to update outdated policies with um outdated names and titles and he is going to be um delivering the findings um from his audit to the audit committee at our first policy meeting in October um then we discussed policy 349 diversity
069Equity inclusion and belonging in the school district the Dei steering committee created a subcommittee of seven including a board member teachers and administrators several of whom are parents in the district and they made a policy recommendation for policy 3419 the first read of the policy will be June 5th and it will be up read on June 5th and then it will be up for a vote on July 10th and we also um established our meeting dates for next year which will be October 7th October 2nd excuse me um November 6th January 8th March 19th and May 21st any questions thank you correspondence correspondence to the district thank you yes we had 14 on this time period uh 10 emails one regarding uh girls the potential for girls flag football for 2025 uh seven uh emails
070regarding the budget and two excuse me three emails regarding student matters then we had four phone calls um three regarding student matters and one regarding employment okay since the last meeting the board has received three emails one was regarding the budget hearing on May 8th one was regarding the timing of the mailing of the budget newsletter and then the board was cced on an email praising members of the Gordon Creek instructional staff announcements Mr Williams good evening um as many of you know the schools will be closed on Friday and Monday as the we observe the Memorial Day weekend um however the students will be Marching In the Memorial Day parade on Saturday morning at 9:00 amm our marching band um from the high school um will be participating in that um so you can
071come out on Saturday morning at 9:00 am. um on the 28th we have our Middle School 5ifth to sixth grade parent night um that's for the obviously the transition to the middle School in information for parents it's held here in the high school um at 6 p.m. on the 28th um we've mentioned the family color fund run before they've they've closed the registration now for the free t-shirt however people still can register and they can come the day of again that's on June 1st and it's going to be a quick one first thing on Saturday morning at 8:00 am. um and that's going to be here starting out in front of the middle school on the third is our National Junior High School um Honor Society our National Junior Honor Society induction ceremony for the
072middle school kids they um yeah at 6:30 here in the High School auditorium the there's all these ceremonies coming up in a row so just to keep keep you busy in the evenings um on the fourth is the triam Honor Society induction ceremony 7 pm here in the High School auditorium and on the 5ifth we'll be having our athletic recognition ceremony here in the library um at 3:00 on that afternoon on the 5th um which again is when you have your next meeting but there's also the um your student recogn recognition component of that night is going to be at 6 pm. in the auditorium we have a lot of students to recognize that night um so the high school staff will have that all organized for the auditorium six o'clock and then we'll move
073up here for the regular meeting starting at 7 o'clock on June 5th Lots going on thank you any other announcements any of our Liaisons okay old business anyone have any old business then we're off to new business I have a motion to approve resolution number 532 Board of Education policy manual file 8320 textbooks Library materials and other instructional materials so moved second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 532 passes I have a motion to approve resolution Number 533 Board of Education policy manual file 7212 multi-tiered system of support mtss So mov second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions motion for resolution Number 533 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 534 approval of the 2024 2025 Board
074of Education meeting dates so moov second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 534 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 535 agreement Professional Services so move second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I oppose extensions resolution number 535 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 536 agreement Professional Services so mov second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I I opposed extensions resolution number 536 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 537 agreement Professional Services so moved second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 537 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 538 agreement Professional Services so moved second any discussion not hearing
075any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 538 passes may have a motion to approve resolution number 539 agreement medical insurance plan so Mo second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 539 passes may I have a motion to approve resolution number 540 agreement dental insurance plan so mve second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 540 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 541 Award of bid masonary replayers so mov second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed abstentions resolution number 541 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 542 Award of bid folding partition panel replacement soov second okay any discussion not hearing any all those
076in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 542 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 543 Award of bid floor finishing Services sove second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed exstension resolution number 543 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 544 Award of bid Transportation some move second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 544 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 54 4 five Award of bid turf fertilizer so moved second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 545 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 546 the award of bid server closet maintenance so moov second any discussion not hearing any all those in
077favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 546 passes I have a motion to approve resolution number 547 placement of students with disabilities so move second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 547 passes may have a motion to approve resolution number 5 eight placement of preschool students with disabilities so move second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number 548 passes so next up is the consent agenda but we have a Amendment to the last item in the consent agenda so it's an amendment to resolution number five 5 58 uh resolution 558 is currently titled agree agreement Boston spa Association of teaching assistance contract and so we need to amend the title of that resolution so can I have a
078motion to amend resolution number 558 to read memorandum of agreement Boston spa Association of teaching assistance so moved second any discussion not hearing any the amendment to resolution I'm sorry not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions so the amendment to resolution 558 passes and now for purposes of uh resolutions 549 to 558 are recognized as a consent agenda for the purpose of Board of Education action may I have a resolution to approve the consent agenda resolutions number 549 through 558 some move second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions consent agenda resolutions number 549 through passes we do have a walk on resolution tonight you should have a copy of it resolution number 559 canvas results of May 21 2024 budget vote and Board election
079so may I have a motion to walk on resolution number 559 canvas results of May 21 2024 budget vote and Board election so moved second all those in favor I I opposed extensions uh the motion to walk on resolution 5 59 passes now may I have a motion to approve resolution number 559 canvas results of May 21 2024 budget vote and Board election so moved second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor I I opposed extensions resolution number five passes any other new business from The District board members okay uh it's now a second time for public comment do we have anyone signed up thank you and uh I read our guidance for public comment at the first period so um I would just ask that uh Miss Natalie Croft please approach the
080podium state your name and residence you have the privilege of the floor is it okay behind sure thank you hello everyone my name is Natalie Croft I am joined by Anthony stalman and Jack Hogan they will not be speaking and I am a ninth grader at Boston spa high school I'm a part of Boston spa High School's 3044 robotics team I'm also a part of High School Boston spa High School's troop carolen School of Dance and red dragon crowy school all of these things I use my phone for for robotics I managed the social media post and I talk to my sponsors with all requiring my cellular device for troop I use my phone for updates and messages recently I've been informed about a new phone policy being put into action if you are unaware
081about the policy I am talking about it is where students put their cell phones in a magnetic lockable bag that cannot be unlocked until the end of the day meaning that students phones will not be be able to be used for the whole day I'm positive that this will help with students focusing abilities and discourage inappropriate uses of cameras in the classrooms but in defense of that it does not stop at all we are granted School Chromebooks with a camera and ability to talk with them the school has put blockers on our Chromebooks but students always find a way to access them again the easy solution is to remove devices but because we are so adjusted to everything being online it is necessary for our learning to have it our future is online we cannot
082be held back from the best learning available phones have been used in serious situations if there's a situation where we need our phones how long do you think would be to take out a phone open the bag dial 911 start recording earlier I mentioned inappropriate uses of recording but never stated appropriate recordings teachers administrators and various staffs all have opinions and some share or act out in a way that's inappropriate or dangerous to the children in Oakville Ontario a guidance counselor said to a student that he looked like a terrorist because he was wearing a Palestinian scarf under his hoodie if the student wasn't recording no one would have believed him our school has had multiple school shooting and bomb threats if the situation was real students would want to have their phone and yes
083technically students would have it on them but they shouldn't they couldn't unlock the bag to use it unless the teachers were given magnets uh for this purpose even if teachers were given magnets in some cases it wouldn't matter like a case when a student only safe place is to evacuate the building we are taught if there is no place to go inside the school we are allowed to leave and find a safe space then call 911 and tell them where you are but this is impossible if our phones are locked but in a more normal case people with medical issues use their phone to keep track of their health as long as you can see that there is plenty of reasons against this um decision safety me medical and information are all provided at One
084Touch of our at One Touch of our hands I have published a petition that has 187 signatures I'm not the only one that agrees with this speech please take this into consideration while you are deciding to execute this policy thank you and have a wonderful night thank you very much for your comment and now we have time for uh comment from our associations uh M mcgaan would you like to speak from our association of teaching assistants thank you very much any other representation from our associations uh PTA PTSA updates yes I got a few uh so Wood Road PTA is having a meeting next Wednesday on May 29th at 7M in the Wood Road Library they'll be voting on next year's officers you need to have an active membership to vote uh if you're unable
085to attend this meeting there will be a Google link made available uh Gordon Creek is continues to accept applicants for PTA president and two co- residents up until June 3rd you can email Gordon Creek PTA gmail.com uh there will be a decision on this at the June 13th meeting also they are hosting a kids night out on May 31st uh at the school it will be games snacks crafts a short film and more you can drop off your kids it's a supervised event so the parents can have a little nice night to themselves whether they want to have a nice dinner or maybe catch a nap in their car um enjoy some time to yourself it's from 6 pm to 8:30 p.m. it's $20 per child and it's open to gouron Creek students only uh
086Middle School is gathering donations for their staff appreciation at the end of the year you can reach out to them for more info and they're also looking for volunteers to distribute yearbooks during during the lunch during lunch on the week of June 10th and finally High School continues to look for volunteers for the after prom especially looking for some night owls people who want to stay up maybe past uh midnight uh I guarantee there'll be some good music that night so that's good DJ that's my report thank you do we have any other reports from liaison associations yeah well of course we can happy birthday thank you for sharing it with us any other updates okay thank you so we do have reason to go into executive session tonight we will not be returning to
087open session afterwards our next meeting will be uh next Wednesday June 5th I need a motion to adjourn to Executive session to discuss the employment of particular persons so moved second all those those in favor I I opposed we are adjourned