001i'm going to call to order this regular meeting of the boston spa central school district board of education for june 1st i want to welcome all those in attendance and those on the live stream and how is everyone tonight excellent our emergency exits should we need to vacate they're behind me on either corner going to the outside and they are the entrance doors into the hallway at the front of the library i would ask that after the pledge everyone remain standing for a moment and now we will do our pledge please rise i pledge allegiance to the fire of the united states america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to have a moment of silence for all the students and
002teachers killed at the rob elementary school in uvalda texas and moment of remembrance for katrin fisher class of 2018 thank you please be seated june is here the final month of the school district year calendar the month of social events final exams regents induction ceremonies class picnics half days celebrations moving up days and graduations tonight is a special night we will recognize the academic achievements of quite a few of our senior students in several different pathways what is remarkable about their achievement is the extraordinary challenging and rigorous courses and programs that it was achieved in truly the result of incredible hard work and focus on the part of our students and an incredible amount of support and caring from all of our staff and of course the ongoing support of parents and caregivers looking at
003our audience of parents and caregivers grandparents family members i recognize and know many of you board member matt drair and myself have young adult daughters who are seniors this year as parents and caregivers we have all had the shared experience of watching them navigate the whole boston spa education path thirteen grade levels starting with their first school experiences at the elementary level the excitement of being a big deal fifth grader the reality of middle school sixth grade the excitement of being a big deal 8th grader the reality of high school 9th grade through the high school years all leading up to the most important event of the senior year and of course i mean the high school graduation though many may have been thinking prom but the high school graduation on thursday june 23rd let's
004proceed with our agenda please dr duca and team will you bring in the students please good evening members of the board superintendent slence thank you for tonight very exciting night for us tonight we're going to highlight several of our students who have excelled in various programs that we offer here at the high school and so i would like to start with nicole steli and the ib program we would like to recognize the 11 international baccalaureate diploma candidates for the class of 2022 the following students have recently completed a very challenging two-year program of study which is internationally known for its rigor and quality in addition to taking ib courses these students all finished a demanding four thousand word essay on a topic of their choice and engaged in a range of extracurricular activities that encourage
005creativity physical activity and community service the ib students were able to immerse themselves into various service projects over the last two years from hosting a virtual running and murph challenge to raise money for the wounded warrior organization constructing a kiosk at the 100 acre wood trail system to growing vegetables in the community garden to be donated to the first baptist church for those in need we are truly amazed by all that they have accomplished we know that they will continue to be lifelong learners and are prepared to effectively participate in an increasingly global society next year will bring a variety of different experiences and we know that they will all continue to truly amaze us congratulations and we wish you the best of luck as i call your name please receive your medallion in court
006to be worn at graduation and remain standing at the front for a group photo all right first i have zachary baskin he'll be attending dickinson college in the fall we have natalie chattanoof going to clarkson university in the fall maya christie couldn't attend but she'll be attending marist college in the fall mallory zimble is not with us tonight either but she will also be attending so she'll be attending clarkson university i've got andrew eisler next and he'll be attending the popular clarkson university next we have maria gallarza she's going to hobart william smith colleges in the fall and karina greco she'll be attending siena college and we have noah mcglapis he'll be going to suny oswego mary mclaughlin couldn't attend tonight but she's attending webster university in the fall and then we have ryan mullen
007we'll be going to liberty university [Music] and lastly we have marissa weddig who wasn't able to attend tonight but she's going to steven's institution institute of technology thank you mr steli next up we have miss snow and mrs carlson good evening it is an honor to recognize these 23 boston spa students in the p-tech program of the clean technologies and sustainable industries early college high school these boston spa students have had the opportunity to engage in a regional program with students from 18 school districts that will culminate in their capstone presentations and graduation next thursday we're very impressed with all that they've done and we look forward to see what they will do in the future i will call you up by name and then we'll have you get your certificate and go over to
008the side there for a group photo roman audet who will be attending hudson valley community college maxwell christensen who will be attending the north shore hockey academy while finishing his degree at hudson valley community college tyler cook who will be attending hudson valley community college zachary ellsworth who will be attending hudson valley community college jacob finch who will be attending cornell university anthony fiore who will be attending hudson valley community college cameron frost who will be attending the university at buffalo stefan gordon who will be attending the university at buffalo james hilton who will be attending hudson valley community college sarah holmes who is unable to be here tonight she will be attending hudson valley community college matt king who will be attending robert morris university gabriel lerock who will be attending the rochester institute
009of technology isabel lear who will be attending hudson valley community college alana lamas who will be attending hudson valley community college thomas mcmanus v who will be attending hudson valley community college nicholas nistico who will be attending hudson valley community college luke or apollo who will be attending hudson valley community college joshua powell who will be attending hudson valley community college nathan renzi who was unable to be here tonight we'll also be attending hudson valley community college john serena who will be attending southern new hampshire university brandi wallison who will be attending hudson valley community college madeleine west who will be attending hudson valley community college and tanner wilson who will be attending hudson valley community college thank you next up we're going to have mr flores and mrs wilcox to talk about sponsor a
010scholar we have a couple dual recognition so we'll just wait for the photo to finish thank you dr duka thank you board of education mr slenz for having us here this evening uh my name is mr flores kevin flores i'm one of the school counselors here at the high school this is lindsey wilcox another school counselor and we're co-advisors of the sponsor scholar program along with uh marissa bongo who couldn't be here this evening but we really just wanted to you know take this time to to recognize our seniors for sponsor scholar several unfortunately couldn't be here this evening part of that is just the nature of the students that we're working with sponsor scholar is really designed to support students who have to overcome some obstacles that maybe you know some of their peers
011do not and so this means that sometimes they have extra responsibilities and challenges um that that definitely keep them you know busy and occupied out in the community so several are working this evening and and like i said have other responsibilities but i'm gonna go through and read their names and we do have a few here tonight that we again we certainly want to recognize um but some of the things that we've done um this year we've had a really great um success rate and another great turnout in terms of students that we're inducting this year the students go through an application process that requires letters of recommendation from their teachers an application they really have to kind of identify you know what their goals are and what they want and you know the people
012around them that are going to help support them to do that and so mrs wilcox myself mrs bongo we meet with them every other week we really support them through school through their family situations and you know the constant theme is on that post-secondary plan what do they plan to do once they graduate making sure that they have the right resources and again supports not only during school but once they leave us and pursue those goals so with that said some of the students that could not make it tonight that i just wanted to recognize alex albert brianna brooks faith denyer isabella gilmore gattian nassara dylan sargent nicole tenoco and sincerity williams and the first student that i'd like to call up is aiden king aiden is going to be pursuing college in the future
013and uh hope hopes to major in game design congratulations aiden next student is maddie west madeleine west [Applause] maddie as you just saw was in our early college high school program she's going to be continuing with the p-tech program at hudson valley next year to finish out earning her associate's degree and tanner wilson tanner was also in the early college high school program as well and like maddie is going to be continuing on at hudson valley for his fifth year earning his associate's degree thank you very much all right next up i'd like to call mrs mctiernan and miss sisk good evening maintaining an average of 95 or above over the course of four years while also balancing the many other aspects of teenage life is already quite an achievement these students manage to do
014it even through a couple of years of pretty unprecedented challenges among all of their other accomplishments so first i'd like to call anna adams who is going to the university of vermont blake bacchus who is going to holy cross zachary baskin who's going to dickinson college emily chen who is going to stony brook alec darling who was unable to be here with us tonight morgan dreyer who is going to macaulay honors college at hunter paige dubiak who is going into the honors program at northeastern university andrew eisler who's going to clarkson karina greco who's going to siena emma gerwitz who's going to the university of south carolina andrew hate who was unde is unable excuse me to be here this evening anna harmon who's going to cedarville university adam hodge who's going to the university
015of pittsburgh lauren jasmine who's going to st lawrence university kentaro kasai who is unable to be here this evening and sydney leroy who is unable to be here this evening catherine loomis who is going to the university of new england christopher mcdonald who is going to clarkson noah manglapus who's going to suny oswego taylon markham who is going to suny geneseo aidan miller who is going to suny buffalo sophie miller who is also going to suny buffalo oh i'm sorry suny binghamton i apologize hon we have tia morelli who is also going to suny buffalo sophia ostrander who is going to the university of rhode island andrew pastor who is unable to be with us tonight alison piscatelli who is going to lemoyne emily robbie who is going to saint rose jasmine roberts who is
016unable to be with us tonight taylor russell who is going to castleton and then we have albert rust avery satina and john cerzenga who are also unable to be with us this evening emily skillings who is going to springfield ruby sorensen who is going to saint michaels mary grace sprissler who's going to stonehill christopher style who is going to siena madison thomas who is going to the university of delaware stephanie vukos who couldn't be with us this evening maggie waltz who's going to the suny school of environmental science and forestry and robert welsh who was going to clarkson 40 students managed to do this that's pretty impressive so if we could give them a hand [Applause] [Music] um all right next up i would like to call natalie chattanoof our 2022 salutatorian of the class
017natalie has excelled in a rigorous course load and is a full international baccalaureate diploma program candidate by starting high school level courses in middle school natalie was able to enroll in 17 college and honors level courses natalie's cumulative gpa is a remarkable 99.079 natalie is an accomplished individual who will be majoring in psychology natalie is a member of the varsity cross country team where she was named mvp and earned the coaches award she also runs varsity indoor and outdoor track and field and takes part in the saratoga recreational running club she has earned the girl scout bronze and silver awards and is currently working on her gold award natalie is a publicist for the national honor society presidents of students helping students and an active member of the science olympiad she volunteers at brookside museum
018vacation bible school and tutors are peers in numerous subject areas natalie was selected for the american legion auxiliary empire girls state and the hoba youth leadership conference natalie would be attending clarkson university in the fall to study psychology and computer science congratulations natalie [Music] and now for our class of 2022 valedictorian jillian fournow [Applause] jillian has excelled in a rigorous course load and by starting high school level courses in middle school jillian was able to enroll in 18 honors and college level courses jillian's cumulative gpa is remarkable 99.49 she's a well-rounded individual who would be pursuing a degree in mathematics jillian served as class president all four years of high school in addition to being president of the science olympiad treasurer of tri-m music honor society junior and senior year a student government delegate and
019a member of the national honor society jillian is a talented bass player where she has been a member of the symphonic orchestra in jazz band since 9th grade receiving all county and all area state selections she also plays in the pit for troop musicals and is a member of the boston spa community jazz band jillian has unified sports partner and regularly volunteers her time as a math tutor additionally jillian is frequent volunteer at the ronald mcdonald house where she serves as a board member for their team ambassador program jillian will be attending northeastern university honors college in the fall to study mathematics congratulations julian again one more round of applause for all these students and remarkable achievements now these programs can't happen without the support of the community and the board so i'd like to
020thank everyone for that and that is all we have tonight superintendent science thank you very much thank you very much we'll have a brief pause in our meeting just to allow folks to head out thank you all for coming conversation dude okay we're going to resume our meeting next up in our agenda is our first session of public comment do we have anyone signed up for the first session of public comment one moment while we check okay we do not uh next on our agenda student government report we do not have any representation from student government did anyone receive a report we have not okay next up is our approval of minutes we have a motion to approve the minutes of the may 4th 2022 public hearing second any amendments or additions to the minutes
021not hearing any all those in favor aye aye aye opposed abstentions approval of the may 4th 2022 public hearing minutes i have a motion to approve the may 4th 2022 regular meeting minutes any amendments or additions not hearing any all those in favor opposed abstentions minutes are approved may have a motion to approve the may 25th 2022 special meeting second any amendments or additions not hearing any all those in favor aye aye opposed abstentions minutes are approved next our superintendent's report superintendent slense thank you very much mr for now we've shifted gears a little bit tonight we were going to go over the the highlights of the year we're going to shift that to the next meeting because we've received a number of questions suggestion observations etc about school safety and security obviously in light
022of the rob elementary school tragedy that happened in texas as we go through this just some of the common questions that have been posed to us some of the concerns that have been posed we want to give people access to some of the documents that we have but i'll explain why that is limited for what i believe is obvious reasons there you go this stems from one of our seven points of strategic focus student positive behavior and wellness you know we tend to think of those in terms of of mental health and overall physical wellness that physical safety piece of it can oftentimes be a terrible deterrent to our students to access the teaching and learning that's absolutely necessary to get the over 100 students as we saw tonight to get them through and access
023have them access the multiple pathways that we have to graduation creating the safe secure and welcoming environment that has to remain a priority not just after tragedies not just in hopes that we will never face a tragedy we have to secure that envelope for our students and our staff to be in so again they can maximize the teaching and the students can certainly maximize their learning that takes place any time we have an unfortunately tragic situation like we saw in texas we very quickly come together as a team what is it about what we're doing now about our practices that we can learn from the situation so again we continue to limit the opportunity that individuals have limit the damage that can be done within our schools and create again that safe and secure envelope
024so shortly after the news broke our group that's listed here came together we heard from a number of parents some of their concerns and questions and again we're constantly asking the question what can we do to improve there's never been a meeting that i've attended here where we haven't come up with a list of things that we know we can do better and then we put into motion for improvement the plans in particular that we have and we'll talk about some of the restrictions there those are constantly evolving again we have the general framework in place but it's the refinements it's the things maybe we didn't exactly think about or we didn't think about that particular variation that may have happened in one of these tragedies and again we're brutally honest with one another where
025we're simply falling short we know in these exercises humility is the only rule that really matters here so when we look at our safety plan these are required by the state education department a number of parents have asked for specifics on what we're doing within our schools to maintain that safe envelope the bottom line is we can't tell them the specifics about that we have two different levels of safety plans within the district all school districts public school districts in new york state have this by virtue of commissioner's regulations the district-wide safety plan which you can find on our website under the student safety portion of it that's a general framework that gives you a good sense of what we're doing how we're doing it and why we're doing it the building level plans are
026so specific that if we shared those one could argue that's the equivalent of a blueprint for how to access and cause damage within our schools to our students staff and our facilities so we cannot by commissioner regulation release the specifics of those building level plans now for parents and community members you see evidence of what we do within those you see the evidence of doing the various drills that we do you see evidence of the capital projects that we're doing for example three years ago i believe it was when we put secure vestibules on the front of all of our buildings that actually happened over the course of a number of years single points of entry all of those types of things those security features that we put in place to again minimize the access
027for anyone who is willing to do harm to our students and staff the revisions again that take place those were happening today as we think about as we met with our district safety team thinking about okay if that specific incident happened here one of the biggest challenges is the reunification portion of it as parents our first instinct regardless of what the district says we want to get to our kids we're going to get in that school whatever it takes that is the most unsafe thing that can happen at that time so the reunification plan is something that we know we have to do a lot of work on do have a lot of conversations about so people understand the value of that you saw the media footage for example from texas where parents are in
028close proximity to law enforcement screaming at them and they still didn't have a clear understanding as to exactly what was happening so that puts everyone at risk these are the types of things that we will have conversations with the communities with the community about continuing to use the district-wide safety team to drive that work and on that team we have a number of representatives parents law enforcement counselors administrators teachers it is a diverse group that brings a number of good perspectives to us so again the work that's done at the specific building level we cannot release that it's not because we're trying to hide anything but i hope everyone understands we simply cannot risk putting our buildings in harm's way by putting that information out there one of the things as i alluded to for
029the district-wide safety team we rely on expertise right as educators we have a very good sense of how to keep students safe generally speaking physically mentally having that overall sense of wellness but when it comes to true security measures that's not what we're in business for that's why we rely on our strategic partners particularly our two school resource officers who are just top notch the new york state police they are here at a moment's notice we do have an advantage a number of our local state troopers have children in the district so they are vested in this work the county sheriff sheriff zerlow has just been incredible in his support there's nothing that i've asked for over the last four years that we haven't got from sheriff zurlo and his team the village pd chief
030bush is on our safety team meeting attends our safety team meetings he too has a very unique perspective because again malta ave is a very unique school district in terms of where it sits we tend to think about this campus the elementary complex and there's it's the very unique malta avenue he brings that perspective to the table our school counselors and mental health staff just continue to become increasingly valuable in these conversations we know we don't have a mental health issue in our country we have a mental health crisis and we have good evidence for that the fact that this board has continued to support the addition of school counselors and school social workers into our schools is only going to benefit our students and families our school staff what is the expertise outside of
031the curricular areas in the instructional areas for our school staff they know our kids when something's off they can identify that pretty quickly talk with the counselor talk with the administrator and we can move fairly quickly based on our our staff's knowledge of our kids certainly our parents this has really come into play in the last week or so and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment and researchers anytime something like this happens there are a barrage of ideas of what we should do next metal detectors clear plastic plastic backpacks no large backpacks all of those things are understandable but then we go to our researchers to say in the research that you've done in the studies that you've done the observations of these mass shooting areas would these things have
032made a difference that work guides us again they're the experts on this we rely on them the student behavior obviously is what drives these conversations when we're asking our students on the positive side of things as much as we look at our lockdown drills especially the ones that are at odd times that are a little bit traumatic for our kids this is all about practicing that muscle memory informing the kids so the action is automatic when something happens we're in lockdown it is silent the lights are off and we can minimize the damage that's done our kids are really good at this when we look at situational awareness again something that unfortunately students in our schools today have to constantly be mindful of our staff has to be mindful of this what are you seeing
033outside what's different knowing the kids as you do what's different about them who do you report that to gone are the days where they're just having an off day and they're just those excuse types of things not anymore you've heard me say on a number of occasions we give people permission to overreact let us figure out what's actually at the heart of it but by all means report some of these different behaviors these red flags that you're seeing this again has come into play significantly because when we talk about the social media behavior and the number of kids over the last four years that dr duke and i have worked together these lines are often what we hear when we confront the individual student for a posting that they've made on social media well come
034on you guys it was just a joke i didn't i didn't mean it i wasn't going to do it but what if it's not and that's where we have to take every one of these seriously we pursue it as far as we can to get to that point where as we experienced with too much frequency in 2018-19 we can say there is no credible threat and that is not our call we are not experts on the credibility of these threats law enforcement makes that determination now when we see students who throw up these red flags for us quick conversation with a number of the people involved there this past year we developed a threat assessment tool this was one of the recommendations from our experts to be able to say this is something that you
035really need to have in place to ultimately determine the credibility or the risk factor of that student we've probably dr duke of six seven eight of those this year and they have been incredibly helpful in really working with both the student and the parents to figure out the level of threat that they present the community network i alluded to this before we've had now four instances one just this past weekend where either a student and or a student and their parent caregiver have reported to us some of these red flags that i talked about the latest one was significant and serious and within 24 hours the sheriff's department because we weren't in school the sheriff's department had the situation secured the student was secured the family was secured and they shut it down typically when
036parents and students bring these issues to us as deputy becker was saying in our district safety team meeting today 24 hours or less we can manage that and coordinate with with our professionals with our experts to get it shut down and they move very quickly because our law enforcement partners like us take these things extremely seriously gone are the days as i suggested before where well these are kids will be kids boys will be boys nope if you post something you're responsible for it so that moves us to the next one the student discipline piece of it we've had a number of students who are home right now because they've been suspended for poor behavioral choices that they have made now there used to be a day when i first started this as a superintendent
037where we really had very limited options in terms of what we could do for us for student discipline typically it was just long-term suspension you're removing the child from the social setting so everyone else is safe but you don't know that you're not perpetuating the issue by sending them back into a home environment that may in fact not be supportive and safe and so it was about 10 years ago i think eight to 10 years ago the laws changed on this what we often do now we will suspend a student out to a certain date but we will condition their return on meeting between two five maybe even in some cases six requirements that may include for example counseling psychological or psychiatric evaluation drug and alcohol counseling there's a number of things that we now
038have at our disposal to make sure that when those students come back when in the high school case dr duca does the re-entry meeting with the students we know the support that they've been given we know that they're coming back to us in much better shape than they went out now do we have recidivism in some of our situations where students will come back everything looks okay but then they fall into those old habits and make another mistake that happens occasionally and we deal with those with more progressive discipline so from our safety plans to the experts that we have our district-wide teams the constant look on how we're evaluating these things for example mr ciriani directed the maintenance department today to conduct a specific audit in one area that we just wanted to make
039sure out of a lesson learned from texas there's one area that we just want to make sure that we are really secure about they're halfway done with that they'll finish that tomorrow again i can't be specific about it because we certainly don't want to give an invitation to someone with ill intent so that gives you a gist of where we are the processes that we use again i encourage anyone who has concerns take a look at our district-wide safety plan that's posted on the website under the parent section student safety section you'll find that and this presentation will be posted by tomorrow morning board members questions with the new posting of this presentation will there be a message out to the community just kind of sharing basically a summary of what you had and that
040this document is out there for their review i actually anticipate doing a short video with this so they can hear directly from me on it okay great i have a question um are you able to speak about how many um drills you practice in the different schools yeah so by uh state regulation we have to do 12 eight fire drills and four lockdown drills the conversation this week and specifically today at the district wide safety committee we reminded people that's a minimum we have one of our schools that's that's uniquely situated that wants to do more but wants to do nuances on those they absolutely can do that we talked about the steps that would have to be taken so right now we do 12 again four of them lockdown and now we're in this
041we're coming out of the pandemic where a lot of the lockdown drills were done by video and so now we're back to doing them live and so we'll have to re-practice the development of that muscle memory and are you able to comment on how often the team goes through and just spot checks areas teach teacher classroom doors things like that i want to talk a little bit about that classroom doors and some of the issues that facilities take a look at well um i don't know how far i can go into it but um i'm not going to go too generally yeah we checked that when we're we're checking doors locks just the general security and physical envelope of the buildings and that's something that you know we do all the time we're actually putting
042together a schedule that will make sure that it's done and someone will sign off on it okay thank you and particularly after we do one of the drills i've sat in i think four of the six schools where they've done the debrief afterwards it is reassuring the level of detail that they get to from a classroom not being marked with the correct number to a door handle potentially being an issue those types of things okay thank you thank you for the questions katie yes matt our elementary sro she splits between the four buildings does the part of the plan address when contractors or vendors may be in a building yeah there's very specific uh rules that they have to follow um when they're in the building in terms of identification what happens when we go
043into a lockdown et cetera they are guests in the building they are locking down just as we are one of the challenges in terms of like uh just escorts for them making sure that they're following the same safety rules if they're going in and out of a building or things like that when you think for example about our construction contractors uh being in and out this is something in the the pre-work meeting we go through all of these level of details what's expected of them from dress code to behavior things like smoking and what the expectation is relative to when students are around thank you brian would you add anything to that nope okay all right so i just had it there was that you yes please the next thing in our safety and security
044is part and parcel of this again board members are aware from the documentation that you have on a rolling basis the information in terms of our project progress against our strategic plan you'll recognize this each year we use this same template to keep us focused on our areas of priority and our goals and it follows this logic path again the strategic points of focus those are the broad areas that we target looking at specific goals what we want to accomplish how each particular area the strategies that they're going to use to accomplish that goal and then tasking members of the administrative team to deliver on that the mission and vision this is not new none of this has changed again the vision really defining that meaningful diploma if in fact as again we saw tonight
045that's our expectation the safety and security piece as i suggested is paramount as you all know again our definition of this of what we expect for our students it's not simply getting that marketable piece of paper it's making the individual marketable because they can accomplish all of these things so the priorities again uh the first one is is critical i won't read through all of these because these have been presented to you a number of times over this year in in prior years the strategic points of focus again curriculum development that sits at at the heart of our work and keeping in mind we tend to think of just the academic subjects you all know from the presentation that was done the social emotional learning curriculum that we adopted at k-5 that they're now working
046with mr agastino is working with the middle school team to start to transition that language those practices moving into the middle school so we have increasing consistency in the language and the expectations the instruction this is something that again constantly trying to provide better instruction this really the biggest challenge with increasingly improving our instruction is time right time is such a limited resource for us and again in the last two years you'll have a day where there's buses that are short and so kids are trickling in that interrupts the instruction all of the efforts that we make are trying to put that secure envelope around protecting instruction so we can maximize the teaching and learning that's happening in each classroom our assessments again making those consistent and making them consistent such that they are truly
047meaningful most of us as educators and i've talked to about this before math teachers tend to be an exception to this we were not trained on how to develop good assessments that meet two critical statistical uh rules they are valid and they are reliable there's a psychometric process that you go through to make sure that that's true so that you can make certain claims based on those tests our students are growing at a trajectory that we expect to meet or exceed grade level oftentimes you can't do that with a homemade test if you will it's interesting it's informational but we can't we're limited on how much we can make claims based on those assessments we already talked about this piece of it uh the recruitment retention and development of personnel you've seen over the the
048last year and a half in particular two years we're bringing back more of our graduates students who have gone away who have gotten their training who have experience outside of the district and now they want to come home it really we've been in a fortunate position to promote a number of our individual staff members into higher positions that's something that we've talked about in building that leadership pipeline that's something we know we need to continue to do because the pools for quality administrators are a bit shallow at times the communications piece of it in the digital era this is something this is one of our biggest challenges believe it or not and you think about well we communicate often with the things that we're sending out but the biggest error that you can make in
049communication is thinking that you've done it effectively right so that's why we brought in capital region boces to audit what we do to see if there's better ways that we can communicate that will be ongoing work and then the long-term planning this is something that you all know brian is really an expert on and keeps us in excellent shape both in financial long-term planning as well as our facilities and the assets that we have the goals for this year again all focused in in the first instance around curriculum getting that common curriculum at the elementary level was so critical to what we discovered four years ago where we had a good deal of inconsistencies all well intended all well-meaning but that the cumulative the accumulation of that then sent our students into middle school in
050very different places that we really couldn't cleanly track and so the common curriculum utilizing our ela work group the mathematics work group at k5 that was within the first six months of our time together four years ago adopted the programs that we have now this is book worms in particular and eureka math our social emotional learning curriculum is in there science we're continuing to make progress with our science curriculum again all common across grade levels across buildings all of which then feeds into our middle school where we will we're finishing year one of implementation on that years two and three really getting that up and moving at a higher level at a more rigorous level for both teaching and learning and then giving our students every opportunity to really maximize the choices that they have
051within this incredible array of high school pathways that i've talked about before for a school district this size is truly remarkable and we saw good examples of that tonight the rti plans this really falls under our multi-tiered system of supports what do we do when the children are not learning there was a time where most districts really didn't have a good plan students would go into an intervention and they would stay there for a year which means they were denied opportunities to take other courses to have other learning opportunities because they were in that intervention all year long maybe because the master schedule couldn't be adjusted to allow them out maybe because our assessment tools weren't good enough to be able to determine exactly what the child's issue was how they were making progress against
052the goals that were set on those very specific issues and what we would do to support them once they left intervention that is not the case for us now in k-8 and certainly growing through k-9 as dr duke started that work three years ago really zeroing in on the specific problems and mrs kelly showed you some good examples of how that works in both reading and math so we're in good shape there we have a number of buildings a number of grade levels where we no longer have students in tier three i'm not sure there can be more testament to the incredible teaching that's going on the curriculum that was was adopted and is being implemented and the constant pursuit of trying to improve on behalf of our kids the assessment development as i alluded
053to before we're in very good shape with our k-8 assessments high school is a very different animal because often that's driven by the third party exams regents exams ib exams ap exams project lead the way exams a number of our programs have those designed assessments already built in the positive student behavior and wellness you know when we look at the k5 sel program as i alluded to that's now moving up into the middle school we're in very good shape there and again i can't congratulate our staff enough this is all happening over the last 27 months where it would have been easy to be able to say you know what there's so much pressure on this is not the time to implement a fairly significant battery of new curricula but our teachers did it they
054continue to do it and we continue to see the positive results we still have work to do as i've suggested before more training more coaching more refining and we're already making plans for that in the coming year the uh making sure that we have within our personnel again how we recruit the the methods that we utilize the structures that we utilize to make sure that when we are in the interview setting we dig much much deeper to find out about the person than what they might otherwise present on paper or who their selected references might say about them we're much more aggressive about that and again we've been able to hire some remarkable staff over the last several years as a result of the work that's going on communications the communications committee reported out on
055this in in april we continue to follow the plan that was developed by capital region boces and their communication team we do have one delay now the goal is to have the website up and going by june that will not be up and going now until probably december one of the challenges is the staff that's available over the summer becomes very limited and so instead of having stewart sit in the back room and design all this we've got to have staff input on that so we'll roll that work into the fall and then the long-term planning brian presented to you december i think it was uh the long-range financial plan and we continue to encourage not just board members but any community member who's worried about our fiscal health moving into the future uh to
056take a look at that so the and then the last piece of it our school culture and climate work that really sits the foundation that sits underneath this is the diversity equity and inclusion work from the state education department we take it back though to that safe secure and welcoming environment to make sure that all of this work that the purpose of it really generates that positive school climate that teachers can focus on teaching students can focus on learning and we minimize the distractions that are going to otherwise prevent students and teachers from being able to do that work that framing is ready we still have one report that we want to have posted and that's our our attendance data we have challenges in every building with uh with attendance and that's been true for
057the last two years so that's something that we want to have hard data on so we can get to work on that all of these things you know this is what we have in place for support again the board has been very generous and supportive in what we've put in place we have a couple additional changes based on some movements within this diagram that we will be making over the summer in recommendations to the board um you know this one this is this is my personal favorite the kids have to be able to read at or above grade level we just know far too much about what their trajectory is if they can't do that that's the last one with the mtss questions on our progress again that you have more detail on this within
058our shared folder the boe superintendent on the tracking for all of these goals again your continued support this is a this is a ton of work folks and that you have provided financial support uh philosophical support sometimes spiritual support to us when we get down a little bit but really the delivery of this is happening in each building the administrative teams the faculty and staff and what they're doing with our kids to go into these data meetings boy it's hard not to put your nerd hat on to see the progress that our kids are making because of the work that the staff is doing and that is it from me questions comments so just a reminder to everyone you know this has been a multi-year effort a multi-year program and as we saw this year
059with the middle of year and then the end of year assessment results from the elementary schools that's the kind of presentation and information that we are going to partner with our district leadership to continue to provide us through next year through the year after have that expanded into middle school and high school as well but you know we we need to let the program take place we need to have the students have multiple years under the program and again we should just continue to see improvement on top of improvement and we will just make sure that we have those presentations to the board members so that we're able to to see that and track that anything more from the superintendent's report no sir next up on our agenda our committee reports i do not think
060we have committee reports there is going to be a policy committee meeting uh before the next board meeting on 6 15. correspondence correspondence to the district school safety and security has really dominated our correspondence there has been some recent concerns around furbies or fur babies in the middle of the high school statements that we are providing litter boxes uh in the nurses office in various places within our buildings to accommodate these students i spoke with a parent today to reassure him that under no circumstances was this actually happening so again any concerns that parents have we are asking them to communicate directly with us particularly before they go or specifically rather before they go and post something on social media that has not been fact checked by us and student behavior is the third category
061that we've had communications on thank you superintendent correspondents to the board we had one related to library materials and we had one which is a thanks to the board for the bike donation from the board for the health and wellness day next up announcements mr williams thank you as you as you heard reference to earlier i believe the prom is coming up on friday night june 3rd with the after prom party back here at the high school following that next tuesday is our national junior honor society induction ceremony it's the middle school induction ceremony and that will be here in the high school at 7 p.m on tuesday june 7th next thursday on the 9th we have our early college high school graduation and student presentations in the morning 8 30 a.m out at tech
062smart followed by early afternoon we have the sponsor a scholar ceremony here within the high school and then in the evening is our senior award ceremony at seven o'clock all on next thursday june 9th on friday june 10th we have the malta avenue school-wide art show four to six in the afternoon at malta avenue and our senior send-off parade is scheduled for next friday june 10th at 7 p.m so again we'll have a big senior send-off parade going through the village at seven o'clock next friday night on monday june 13th they will have the tri-m music society inductions so we'll get that done on monday june 13th again 7pm here at the high school and then the last day of classes for the high school are on on june 14th which is right before your
063next meeting on the 15th so that's it for the next two weeks other announcements and board members in front of you you have a invitation to the clean technologies p-tech graduation next thursday also in our folders there was a document that had moving up ceremonies for all of our elementary schools and the high school graduation date looked like this i will endeavor to partner with the superintendent to try and continue to send out reminders to all about all of these events and certainly you are absolutely welcome to attend any of these events that you can um please just uh send communication into the superintendent if you would like to or if you think you will be at any or all of these events old business none from us okay on to new business then i
064have motion to approve resolution number 531 approval of 2022 2023 board of education meeting dates second any discussion i just want to share that there was a document that has the entire meeting schedule in your folder it is consistent with years past a reorgan first one only single meeting in july then meetings in general on the first and third wednesdays of each month in the month of february one meeting because on the second wednesday because of the school vacation and other than that it pretty much follows form with all prior years any discussion not hearing any all those in favor i opposed extensions resolution 531 we passes a motion to approve resolution number 532 award of emergency contract food service program second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor aye aye opposed extensions
065resolution 532 passes we have a motion to approve resolution number 533 award of bid science supplies second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor aye aye opposed extensions resolution five three passes i have a motion to approve resolution number 534 agreement professional services second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor opposed abstentions resolution 534 passes i have a motion to approve resolution number 535 agreement professional services second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor opposed abstentions resolution number 535 passes we have a motion to approve resolution number 536 request for proposal attendance zone study second any discussion if you would superintendent can you just again give us a summary of this uh rfp and what we're trying to accomplish here sure the attendance zones were established many many years
066ago the district as we see in our who are we report has evolved fairly significantly becoming much more diverse than when the attendance zones were established we are seeking a firm to come in to take a look to see about the distribution of our students to see if there are better ways more equitable ways that we can distribute our students see if at the same time there are more efficiencies that can be gained in transportation in how we pick up our students and then to have the conversation with the board about recommendations which may be you're as good as you can get right now it may be significant changes it may be phased changes there are a variety of outcomes that can result from this but the biggest thing is that it's been a long
067time since we we've established these it's time for us to take a look thank you and am i correct that this is absolutely just the first step in quite a process here and absent any other recommendation from [Music] you're not going to need to change a thing there will be an entire process communication strategy opportunity for input discussion etc on any changes to attendance zones and where students may attend which school fair fair just for example on that you don't say for example next year we're going to change this you actually go out until all kids currently in the system are moved through so you're looking at a specific cohort down the road when the new model if one is recommended and approved by the board it would start thank you any other discussion or
068questions not hearing any all those in favor opposed abstentions resolution 536 passes a motion to approve resolution number 537 field trip spanish exchange program second any discussion i'm coming back for that trip [Laughter] applications for chaperones will be accepted at a certain point in the process i just have a comment it's just absolutely wonderful to see this resolution here in front of us and getting back to this type of activity that is absolutely an enrichment experience for our students a great path for them is just absolutely wonderful note we're out to basically almost a year from now a year minus a couple of months march 2023 but we absolutely hope that this can happen any other questions or comments not hearing any all those in favor opposed extensions resolution 537 passes i have a motion
069to approve resolution number 538 placement of students with disabilities second any questions not hearing any all those in favor opposed abstentions resolution 538 passes i have a motion to approve resolution number 539 placement of preschool students with disabilities second any questions not hearing any all those in favor opposed abstentions resolution 539 passes resolutions number 540 through 556 are recognized as a consent agenda for the purpose of board of education action i have a motion to approve resolutions number 540 through 556. second any discussion i just want to note that um resolution 540 is accepting the resignation of superintendent slent's currently effective 8 12 22 pending any possible change there certainly will be time and moments where we will properly thank and recognize the superintendent for his tenure with us and other than that are there
070any appointments that have attendance yes 543 we have a number of our team members here who are up for tenure if i could ask all of you who are on the tenure list to stand up please to be recognized and we will do a proper celebration on the 22nd with all of you so congratulations in advance thank you any other comments or questions anything we need to point out on the consent agenda not hearing any all those in favor opposed extensions consent agenda resolutions 540 540-556 passes certainly thank all of those who are these appointments for summer curriculum work appointments for summer support services there are literally hundreds here thank everyone helping us have a great summer we do not have a walk-on any other new business okay we are now at the time in
071our agenda for the second period for public comment mr williams do we have anyone signed up for public comment thank you do we have any representation or presentations from our associations none are here tonight the pta uh yes uh so as uh mentioned before after prom is this friday uh there are still slots available for uh volunteering so you know any parents would like to sign up volunteer can contact the high school ptsa in addition to that there's a senior barbecue next wednesday june 8th they're looking for help with desserts and beverages so once again get in contact with the ptsa for those of you who haven't experienced a boston spa prom just going up to the city center and watch the kids come in it really is a fantastic night so if you have
072the opportunity we we certainly enjoy that and would encourage all of you to stop in and take a look yes we did have some concerns about parking and there was some comparisons made to uh having more people in attendance than at homecoming so i think we've created a little healthy competition there but it was a fantastic event so thank you to mr redder store for the music team for that and just a clarification for the um prom event at the city center uh guest visitors they're not allowed into the prom itself correct if board members want to attend just send me a note and and dr duke and i will uh keep an eye out for you when you uh when you come in but in terms of uh parents caregivers other community members they're
073certainly welcome to see the entrance the red carpet if it were as it were into the prom which starts at 7 30 7 30. 7 30 8 o'clock i'm there at 7 30. so that's that's on my calendar all right so red carpet 7 30. thank you all right may i have a motion to adjourn second all in favor i opposed we are adjourned thank you