Bronxville Board of Education Meeting - March 2022 Full

001[Music] may i have a motion to move into executive session with the topics of collective negotiations with the bronx hall administrators association of bta clerical unit health units excuse me and the employment history of a particular individuals and potential litigation second all in favor all right [Music] great [Music] awesome so first of all thank everybody that's here tonight and to those of you that are joining us online generally i feel like it's just us and the administrator so it's kind of nice to have some friendly faces in the audience and i also want to thank our students this is her second meeting with us and she'll actually have a report later on so our agenda tonight really focuses on two main topics the first is the approval of the job specification for the district superintendent

002and then the um proposed budget so first second of all thank you guys for that participated in the community outreach that we've done your insights about the quality and the leadership characteristics of our next superintendent has very much molded what we're going to talk about tonight as it relates to the budget dan wherever he is is going to present the budget please know that this is our third meeting to talk about this we started back in january in a budget workshop on a snowy snowy saturday morning where we spent a couple hours really going into the details including things like we look at the demographics of our community and also things like the national birth rate by the way which is on tremendous decline so the fact that we're seeing in the time in student

003enrollment is not actually very we also surprising class sizes because that's part of who we are as a community is what the size of those classes and we also to we actually did a really deep dive into special education maybe deeper than dan wouldn't have liked us to but we did um and we also talked about the infrastructure needs of our building because we do have a large um fairly old building and all of this has to be done with an eye on the tax cap and so there's some serious constraints that we talk about so we talked about it in january we talked about it in february tonight we will adopt the budget which then allows us to move forward for a public hearing i believe in april and then finally may early first

004week so but before we go on any further at our last meeting we had a significant discussion about dei and i'd like to turn it to roy who's going to give us a quick update yeah so thank you arlene hi everybody thanks for coming out i see you all um as a result of the last board meeting i had the opportunity to meet with several members of the community about issues related to di and some of the emotion around the topic in general and i thought we had a good meeting and as a result of that i'm moving forward with an advisory committee to to work with myself and make recommendations so the advisory committee will have 12 parents on it three board members uh two administrative reps two teacher reps uh potentially a student

005rep as well and the goal is to really examine information because i think that that's the best source of what we can talk about is when everybody's sharing the right information and accurate information so we'll look at things like state standards and critical the frameworks culturally responsive frameworks some of our curriculum guides some book lists and things like that it really dive into it i'm very hopeful that we can have uh positive and productive conversations around the topic and look at the eye through the legs of what's best for the broxville community and what makes the most sense as it integrates into our school or doesn't it i'm hoping that as an advisory committee we've come up with a broad-based statement about that and a list of recommendations for board consideration so we have um

006our first meeting on april 5th and i'm looking forward trying to get that forward great thanks on a celebratory side of the note let's have a big shout out for the boys varsity basketball here [Applause] several parents reach out to me who said some of the the young men had attended community events and really had interacted with younger kids and i just thought that was a great show of leadership under the bronx promise that they were taking time to really share their experiences their joy their celebration with those who were kind of in the pipeline maybe even at the elementary school but still in the pipeline to play basketball later on in their careers here so a big shout out to joe haven and all the administrators for what they did and everybody that attended

007heard it was a great time um i also wanted to just mention for those of you that maybe don't have children in high school this is actually a very exciting time in the high school because the seniors hopefully have had their wonderful letters from their colleges so they're in an exciting place as they think about their next season or maybe they're dealing with a little bit of regret but they're still excited it's been a lesson learned for them it's the time of year where they're starting to look at ap get those aps behind them and also just really looking at that next seasons of their lives and so there's a lot of good buzz in the high school at this time of the year and we do a lot to help them transition to make

008that transition to college for somebody who has two kids that have transitioned that is a tough transition at least it was for my family and so my children and so i'm glad of all the work that school does to cast them off um just one piece of housekeeping for those of you that are on youtube please submit your questions for the board section for the comment section via the comment section box on youtube please remember to include your name we will not be addressing questions that come on anonymously also the live chat has is not available so make sure you post your questions into that questions section and so at this time i'd like to welcome school leadership to our meeting they are with us virtually for the presentation you are not going to be

009able to see their faces because we had to make a trade-off between their faces or the slides um oh actually well but we're gonna have to reduce them soon so you can actually see the slides um and so but at the end when we the board has their discussion we will bring them back in the gallery picks and so with that i will turn it over to susan great uh thank you so much can you hear me okay perfect um and thank you um i'm here with my colleagues dr charles fowler and dr marty brooks and um connie if you could go to the very first slide to start off which is fine but i wanted to say thank you first of all again to connie lauren i'm going to pronounce your name lauren toes

010um i did that as well as i could um as well as to brett ashley for really putting together along with arlene's great help uh all the community meetings and a thank you to the entire school community for a really warm welcome i do have to say as a parent of two adult children now i wanted to say to all the parents in the room that the highlight for us is always meeting with the students and your students middle school and the high school students we met with were fantastic and we should be very proud and we're very helpful in in helping in our work my part of the presentation is going to talk about that information gathering that we did where we had a variety of invitational virtual meetings invitational person meetings there was

011one [Music] general meeting that was open to the public and then there was the online survey all of this was handled by your team in bronxville sending this information to you and then if we could move forward to the third slide connie in total um we met with in focus groups with virtual and in person people and the purpose of our meeting with people virtually and in person is to gather input from the community shaped around the two prompt questions that we use and our job is simply to listen and to write down what we hear and then look for repeating themes that we hear from most groups and some groups and we did that very successfully over two days just last week on march 14th and march 15th and connie if we could just

012move to the next slide just showing you a range of different people that were included and it was a group of community members as well as parents as well as students faculty teachers administrators village leaders senior citizens etc in a total as i mentioned it was 202 people we also had a survey that was available on a link on your website that went to the school leadership survey monkey site that 122 people participated in and also left comments and this is just a breakdown to give you an idea of the number of people who responded based on resident students resident without students etc etc and i'm pretty sure that you're going to make this powerpoint available later this evening on your website so folks who can't see this you'll have a chance to look at

013that more deeply this was very consistent with our experience in bronxville when we were there when we helped you with your past superintendent search and then if we move on to the next slide which is going to just be a snapshot from the survey where using past job specifications to really kind of get a sense of their relevance today versus on what proved to be effective when we did the search for you six years ago people just cited what they thought were very important of the seven then position specifications and this is again just a quick snapshot of how it was very um how people responded to that that prompt and clearly at the top communicate effectively creating a culture of trust able to articulate a forward-thinking vision relishes the challenge of leading an experienced

014leader an inspirational leader and somebody knowledgeable about school finance and then if you go to the next slide connie please there were um you know from the focus groups as i mentioned there were 100 there are 202 people and again using those two prompt questions that we had shared in our conversations with the focus groups and marty or chuck do you remember offhand exactly the language of those i have them right here from your perspective what would attract a skilled and experienced administrator to be superintendent in the bronxville school district and what do you see as the major leadership challenges for the bronxville school district over the next three to five years we met with the various focus groups we looked for repeating themes but we never attribute what we learn to an individual or

015cohort it goes into collective buckets and really our our mission is to learn and gather the input from the community and from that we worked together over the weekend our team of three and we really created an appendix of this information and there were certain themes that really rose to the top they're here listed in alphabetical order not in any list of priority commitment to student success culture excellence district finances are solid district known for its innovation and flexibility energetic talented parents and faculty excited to help engaged in general's pta and student council next slide please connie and again continuing what would make somebody want to work in bronxville high achieving and dedicated faculty and staff um school is the crown jewel small district in the 1k12 building strong administrative team and an unparalleled foundation

016that's on the next slide if you wanted to move that forward connie please and then what we learned from the groups that we met with in response to our question what would be the leadership challenges in the next three to five years again listed alphabetically not in a particular order beyond that addressing social emotional challenges post pandemic being an objective leader willing to listen to all voices being visible and transparent building trust while doing what is best for students drawing lines when needed providing consistent and clear communications and then on to the next slide please i'm going to pass this over to my colleague marty but just to set the stage for him which i'm sure he's going to reinforce we use these themes as the foundation for proposing draft specifications to the board who

017in some form will adopt that and then that will become our our recruitment tool but i'll turn it over now to to marty thanks um so to pick up where susan left left off we we basically combined three different sets of data um we took the information that we read online and combined that with what people were saying were still important to them from the specs that we used in 2017 and then combine that with what we heard people share with us in the focus groups and three large newer sets of priorities came out so the first is an experienced educational league leader with a proven record of collaboration with staff and community who supports the principles embedded in the bronxville promise and is committed to taking it to the next level next slide please

018connie a visionary transparent and honest leader who inspires academic excellence and innovation and promotes high expectations for student and staff success and well-being next slide thank you connie an excellent and proactive communicator who welcomes using multiple platforms to listen learn and inform while keeping staff parents students and community continuously engaged a skilled and adaptive manager who responds effectively to challenging situations understands school finance and taxation matters and rallies and unites staff and community members around creative solutions and lastly a centered objective thinker who has a record of building productive relationships and is excited to lead the bronxville educational community into the next decade so those are the specs that we're going to ask the board to consider tonight and moving from there with those specifications approved by the board we then do the outreach to

019the educational community in the country through a variety of media that are available the first is we recommend including an announcement of the vacancy with those specifications that are ultimately approved by the board listed right in the posting so that candidates immediately get a view of what it is that bronxville is looking for in its next superintendent similarly putting that same information on the website of the national superintendents association the american association of school administrators and actually in our work in that website uh an email will go to virtually every current superintendent in the united states again describing bronxville as a community and describing the kind of superintendent background and experience that the board is looking for it will also be on the website of the new york state council of school superintendents those are

020the 714 roughly school superintendents in new york state on the website of the national alliance of black school educators on the website of alas the association of latin school administrators and then we send a recruitment letter or description again of the specifications which the board has approved to a variety of people throughout the country are at universities that prepare superintendents uh associations of superintendents throughout the country associations of school boards throughout the country again intending to bring to as large an audience as possible a description of bronxville as a community and as a school and a description of the qualities that this board of education is looking for in superintendent candidates so once the board has approved the specifications then those steps will be taken to get that information out locally and nationally and that

021concludes uh our overall presentation thank you we're happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you chuck i'm sorry i wish i had a slide that had all five on it i apologize that's an oversight now that we think about it but if i could sum it up it's an experienced educator academic excellence communicator centered objective thinker and then one basically to keep the finances and the taxes in order so that's kind of how i how i think about it so with that open it up to the board for questions comments go ahead i i'd be kind of interested to hear you know relative to other searches you are or have been involved in recently what would you say seth would set our criteria apart from other searches is this something that most

022districts are looking for is there anything in here that's unique to bronxville some aspects of it are um are similar in theme in almost every superintendent's search that we're doing and others are doing the issue of communication and engagement of the school community is an important uh aspect of a superintendent's work everywhere but the very first of the criteria related to the bronxville promise is obviously unique to the contents of of that promise and um i think there's probably a great deal more emphasis in what we heard from people in the bronxville community about academic excellence and the importance of solid academic background for students as they prepare for life after high school marty or susan just in comparison to um the past position specification the emphasis there had had actually been more on somebody

023who was experienced and could handle a bond offering and a capital renovation plan that was the timing of where your school district was at that time that's shifted now so that didn't really rise to the top of what we heard in terms of what chuck just articulated and i do want to reinforce what he said about the bronxville promise because that was a theme that came through um many of our that a lot of our conversations with community members and it is just does distinguish bronxville from other public school districts that we're familiar with and i think one other point is the importance of somebody who can really listen people talk to us about how different people have different views of what bronxville's next level of work might be and the importance of somebody who

024can listen carefully to all of that and craft that into a consensus and um the last spec i think it was the last um we carefully chose the the language of a centered and objective um thinker and and communications as chuck reference is a common thread in any organization nowadays and humility as well but we heard the the necessary component of somebody who really enjoys that doesn't just do it as a task but it's something that he or she welcomes and likes to listen and learn and like to continuously engage people and can use um a topic as a as a learning opportunity to extend communications with the community from an outreach standpoint thank you others jack yeah you mentioned two things that i want to come back to one is taking it to the

025next level and the other is excellence all highly competitive districts throw those words around did you get any sense of what people were expecting three years down the road what would tell community members that we have somebody who values excellence the same way that they're looking for now and when they take it to another level will it be the next level that people want do you have any sense of what that next level looks like that people want it's a complex question let me see you um i i think that um almost everybody we met with has tremendous pride in the broad bronxville school they see it as a unique place in so many ways three schools under one roof the level of accomplishment that the kids have achieved over time you know i i

026could go on and on and i think people are hoping that the system is committed to maintaining the work that has brought all of that in place while trying to figure out in terms of creativity innovation critical thought what is really next what where would the system go and um what are the views of the staff what does the what do the parents think and how can you blend all of that together into a vision that would help move the place from where it is now which is a great place to an even better one well reinforcing the singularity of bronxville because again the bronxville promise distinguishes bronxville from other school districts who are familiar with jack are you going to apply for the job i'm enjoying being retired i think i think two contra

027concrete examples that i heard relatively defining the next level um a feeling to look at the bronzeville promise and uh and perhaps in particular look at issues of self-development and should they be added in or in another way emphasized some parents asked about that others talked about the challenge in today's world of college admissions a great deal of pride in what's currently happening and what the record in bronxville has been but a desire to be sure that bronxville keeps up with the changing world of college admissions uh as the next few years unfold and jack i would i would add one one more point we heard a fair amount about concern about the impact that the pandemic has had on kids and staff as well but on on kids and people feeling that's a tale

028yet to be told and how the district responds to that monitors that response to that over time is seen as a key piece right and also um committed to the next level student focus but also staff and faculty focused as well did technology come up in that conversation well i would expect pandemic but i wondered about technology as in using technology to teach our children not necessarily learning technical skills just curious yeah i heard some of that from parents with whom i met the basic idea was that out of the unfortunate circumstances of the pandemic there were some technological approaches that were in fact uh to the advantage of students and and teachers and the desire to capitalize on those while not um continuing to utilize technological processes that uh were no longer appropriate given

029the in-person schooling that was available one common theme we heard i think relative to technology and to the pandemic was a great deal of pride in how much bronxville was able to accomplish compared to other districts in uh restoring in-person learning as quickly as as was done in your community tremendous amount of pride in that and the students were proud or are proud of their schools and that's why we tucked in the language of an adaptive manager to chuck's point and to what you're suggesting arlene is that what were the positive learnings from the pandemic that could still be incorporated to help continue reinforcing as another way of learning and social development for kids the kids were particularly proud i thought and i'm sure marty you felt the same when you met with you had

030high school students i had middle school students we had good numbers who joined i think 16 and 17. it was um a terrific turnout um [Music] they were eager to share points of view and and what they see is the future and how proud they are of the school district and how the school district lets kids figure out their own um areas of interest and explore them and um there was real unanimity about that and they were all very respectful to each other which again i think is a good reflection for us to use when we reach out to talented people to see if we can start a conversation with them about the bronxville opportunity i mean let me just add a quick thought about that the high school students with whom i met talked

031about the increased voice and choice they had during the pandemic and their hope that now that they're back in school they'll continue to have more voice and choice than perhaps they've had in in the past this is a trend that's occurring across the u.s kids spent a lot of time having discretion over how they conducted themselves while at home and now they're back in school and the amount of discretion that they're able to to employ has has diminished a little bit and students are trying to find a comfortable place and i think that's going to be a challenge not just in bronxville but really every place yeah i mean obviously we we use the word excellent i mean i don't think anybody advertiser or superintendent superintendent who sucks um if they'd be asking me and

032i'm not interested i'm just trying to get off this board so um when we're talking about the people to whom you will as you know we're not the educational professionals and we need your help um and that's you know that's why we partnered with you as we did when we had the search that yielded dr uh montesano fraxel is unique and certainly in my estimation it's uh from start with the building for the community the bronxville promise is significant in the reflection of the community in my estimation the staff we have good labor relations i think um and uh you know our response to covid was to my knowledge better than anyone i'm aware of i mean we've been in business since just after labor day of to what extent are the talented people that

033you intend to reach out for out to on our behalf to what extent do they perceive if at all bronxville is being unique or appealing to talented people or being an opportunity that they might be interested in this this question um came up a lot during the meetings that we had people asked us so how well-regarded is brownsville how well known are we do you think that people working elsewhere who are happy and well-liked where they currently are would be interested in making a change to come here and our answer is bronzeville is uh very well known incredibly highly regarded and i think likely to draw a very strong field of candidates there are a handful of school districts in every geographic area that are known to be the kind of districts that superintendents would

034like to work in bronxville is one of those i think you kind of follow up on that point you know when i read the characteristics to me they seem very general and you can kind of pick any westchester school district almost kind of plug it into here other than the promise how do you get to this point that tom was talking about the specifics of bronzo does their obviously their characters what else goes out with this kind of package or if i'm interested in this position would i pull up that would give me more specifics to rob so just trying to understand that piece of it because somebody you know obviously probably the three or four states right around here i know but the suburb i'm thinking of the chicago uh north of the city

035which has some very similar i think uh characteristics of westchester but they may know nothing about bronzeville but it might be good fit this to me just says uh you know why would i pursue this um it's generally the case that people who read this will contact one of the three of us to find more out and of course it's in the it's through our talks with them that we're able to add color uh to the um words but we wrote the five specs with specific words that speak to people who are interested in doing the kind of work that we feel people told us bronxville needs to have done in the coming years so what we're going to seek to do when we begin our recruiting which is tomorrow and we start running our

036ads is to reach out to folks who whose both background and experience match the kinds of words that are written in these five specs they are broad but the words within each one are pretty specific and everyone is in there to communicate a specific message to people who are contemplating applying and as i think we shared with the board at an earlier date we don't reach our goal is not to screen only people who apply our goal is to recruit actively and what we do is we reach out to people currently aren't perhaps not contemplating making a change and talking to them about why bronxville might be a good match for them yeah and just to expand on or re-enforce what marty said is i appreciate my goal your your observation about these five specifications

037but they're unique to what we learned the two days and evening we were working in the district as well as the online survey and each each specification we do for any of our clients is unique to that client and they are not there may be thematically interchangeable but the actual language or the words as marty referenced are very specific based on what we learned and heard from the community we met with when we were in brownsville and again our recruiting methods are multi-fold there are advertisements they're both virtual postings on the professional websites and there's the 1800 um curated list that chuck referenced and then there's the direct outreach that we have as as marty said our work begins when you approve the specifications which then allows us to use that as the tool by

038which we try to find the candidates who best match your specifications and then we'll start reaching out to people as well as reaching out to people we don't know but may work in a district that's similar to bronxville and have characteristics and see if we can engender a conversation that might be worthwhile and as chuck and marty well know uh dr montenceno is going to be important because superintendents know each other so they're going to know boy and they'll pick up the phone or shoot him an email or know he's happy and that's a positive reflection and and we hope we help and no but also um you as the board are important in this process because trust me talented superintendents or aspiring superintendents they're going to check board members out in the community as

039much as they're going to look at the physician specification itself they're going to review video of meetings they're going to see what effectiveness you have as a governance team these are all important factors for consideration so that's part of our toolbox as well that you have a history of a solid governance board governance team and good um governance in your central office with the board as well that's another attribute not built in here but it's fundamental to how do we try to recruit people and if i could mention there are demographic elements of bronxville that work hand in hand with the high goals that aren't included in the specifications um a school district k-12 within one building with 15 to 1600 students that brings alive much of what's spoken about in terms of the personalization

040of education and the superintendent's ability to work with classroom teachers and work in the building with students and drop in in classrooms though that is very attractive because it it is so rare uh there's been much discussion also about the role of the foundation in bronxville and having that available in addition to the benefits of a reasonable tax base and how that can make these specifications really become a reality rather than platitudes about things that would be desired but are so difficult to come by in schools that have a different demography in terms of size and relative support but you know chuck to that point it will also serve to be a deterrent to uh to superintendents or aspiring superintendents who don't want to work in a k-12 building where they can't sit in their

041ivory tower and be separate from the students and the faculty so that's an important selling or another part of our toolboxes you need somebody who will thrive on being in the same building where every day you're going to be interacting with kindergarteners up to seniors as well as the faculty and staff that's not normative in a lot of school districts i do um so first of all i think a couple of things can't go unsaid with one of which is we've got some really big shoes to fill and yeah i think i think that makes it you know even that much difficult to come up with a set of uh criteria that we're looking for with number two i was very encouraged by the number of people that participated in the sessions that you put

042together the respondents to the to the online survey it was it was a level of engagement that i didn't expect and so i was very encouraged by that okay so now those two comments aside as i think about it we're living in um we're living in changing times and in changing times i think one of the most important things is communication and and visibility around the things that are happening inside the school and the question i have is we we have these um five criteria which i think are really good um for the most part i wonder if there's if there was thought put into the ordering of those criteria and i'll say why and and the reason i ask that question is because as i think about it one of the most important things

043after experience should be a leader who's ready for um to manage through those changing times by providing visibility frequently through communications in many different channels and i sense based on many of the discussions i've had with with members of our community that is something that is of utmost import to our community so vicky i think the question is how did you put them in order yeah what was your rationality yeah and let's and let's talk about whether or not we should be we should be perhaps amplifying one or two of these that we think are critically important given given the changing times that were we're embarking on at the moment um the order in which they appear will be completely your call um we put them in this order because this reflects defeat the feedback

044that we got people were talking to us about experience supporting the educational pro program moving it ahead the importance of having a visionary transparent leader who really could maintain and promote the excellence of the pro program there so we put the first two together because we thought they went together um communication was a key piece and that's why that appeared third but again if you think as a board that this needs to appear in a different order that's that's fine uh i think one of the reasons why braunschweig promise is in the first is we want the person to immediately upon reading that go to the bronx still promise because it broadly describes uh in a way you can't get into a small ad in the journal it describes bronxville and its aspirations so we

045thought it would be good to put that out in front of the candidate first so that they took that step to look at what brexit stands for i think too i mean again i agree with marty and chuck of course and it's your decision forward however you want to order it i think a smart person is going to read all five and not stop at one and somebody once said if you're reading a contract you always want to skip the beginning the end and go to the middle of the contract that's where the important stuff is but the point is is that the type of person that we hope to identify who best matches your specifications is going to read all five regardless of the order it's going to be important yeah we should talk

046about it i have a type of view and around how much visibility transparency and frequent communication matters um given what had you know what we've gone through in the last couple of years as a as a country not just bronxville and what we expect to have to go through over the next several years so something to think about guys and i may send you some comments afterwards okay thank you anybody else yeah uh we've touched upon community and you know i could see where uh potential candidates would be would be maybe wary of a small town where the people are highly engaged in the school as they are in bronx hill given its uh integral involvement in in the community itself um of course we haven't had you know youtube moments at our board meetings

047this one's not over yet so um there's the potential i guess but um our community of highly engaged highly bright people of varying opinions on things is that a is that something that is an attraction for a high quality candidate does it put off does it just put off the people who want to sit in an ivory tower like jack did um but what you know it's important it's very important for like dr montesano has done a wonderful job of engaging the community and managing the community and and it's you know it's not an easy community bronx is uh you know a challenge i think um in my experience um how do you how do you sell the broxel community active engaged and very bright that it is um how do you how did how

048does that play towards the high quality candidates if you can answer that uh i'll show you a couple of things uh i believe that high quality engagement is very attractive to creative and able leaders demagoguery is not attractive to uh able and creative leaders and i think the reputation that bronxville has is for that in-depth engagement of parents of students of members of the community i mean in speaking with people on your village board who are so enthusiastic about the importance of this school to the community as a whole and and their desire to become engaged with the new superintendent when he or she uh is is appointed i think that is very attractive and makes the district very attractive to high quality candidates but simply having lots of people stand up and shout and

049yell at school board meetings without that active engagement which unfortunately is taking place in the number of communities today as a result of our current political climate uh that that becomes far less attractive but bronxville because of your history and what's been happening in bronxville has an ability to attract people who sincerely want that constructive and creative kind of engagement so chuck what's our biggest challenge i'm sorry i didn't hear that chuck what is our biggest challenge i i think probably um the biggest challenge is uh of finding the right leader who may be in a place as marty mentioned earlier who is not thinking about making a change at this moment but really speaks to in his or her working history the specifications that are in front of you and convincing them that now

050may be a good time to to look at this opportunity it may be a once in a decade opportunity in terms of of a position being available such as bronxville offers so it's really bringing the opportunity to the attention of a field of very capable instructional leaders who are out there because it's it's a challenging time in terms of people making changes uh in their work particularly in this immediate post-pandemic period yeah people are going to look for a state if they're going to make a change they're going to want to be assured that where they're moving to there's a history of stability and commitment to public education and engaged parent base and foundation um you mentioned too i forget which board member that you know following in a successful superintendent's footsteps can be tough

051too somebody has to be assured that the board is going to be receptive to a new person and want to ensure that that person is successful as well because he or she will not be um doctor montessando i also think there's another challenge um some communities have been broken by um dissent within about the direction that they think the educational program needs to move in and broxville is not there but i think a big challenge is making sure bronxville doesn't get there and whomever you hire to replace roy is going to be confronted with people who have different views of what the next three to five years should be like and again trying to find common ground and reaching consent consensus in a way that does not cause the community to split i think is

052going to be a significant challenge that's a good point okay any other any other questions from the board if not um mickey i feel like there's an open item on the order and so um would you like us to go ahead and take the motion subject to revisiting the order yeah and um there's not much time because we're printing i understand tomorrow so yeah tell me give me yeah if i could just to jump in here my understanding is we're hoping to get an advertisement in two issues of education week which is the preeminent journal for educators in order to capture two we would have to get the copy to the ad person is it tonight chuck tonight or a first thing tomorrow first thing tomorrow morning meaning we need to get it in his

053hands by you know 7 30 8 in the morning because we don't want to lose the opportunity to capture those two issues i want to move number three up to two i also wanna uh augment number three a bit because i i have a strong view around um visibility and transparency that i think the community is looking for frankly so um if i sent some proposed language in the next hour or two would that would that be sufficient do we need to do it in a public meeting i'm afraid is that right yes um so we could um yeah that's i agree with moving three to two yeah two is fine okay then let's add um then keep talking give me two minutes okay how about an absolutely proactive communicator who appreciates the value right

054okay uh of using multiple platforms or you can add whatever uh whatever descriptor with value right the high value whatever of using stressing the value of using multiple platforms to listen learn and inform i think i think that stressing it and moving it up that might accomplish what you're looking for i think it does and if we can add the word keep keep working with me here tom if we can add the word we can add the word frequently in there somewhere right that that kind of establishes a tenor of communication i think proactive mickey kind of covers frequency okay proactive on the head of the curve yeah which which i mean we've agreed that you want to move slide number number three to number two correct yeah correct in terms of the order all

055right tom's got it you gotta have a lawyer that's right that's not funny and then the now and the now two will read an excellent and proactive communicator who values the frequent engagement uh and use of multiple platforms to listen learn and inform while keeping staff and parents and students and community continuously engaged all right let's read that it sounds perfect did did marty did you get all of that um okay we want to make sure we get the language correct go ahead chuck an excellent and proactive communicator who values uh the frequent frequent frequent engagement and uses multiple platforms to listen learn and inform while keeping staff parents students and community engaged continuously it works well and guys look i don't i don't intend to uh spend time working through specific words and nitpicking

056but the point is important here i think yeah words matter i think everybody agrees this is this is about communication it's about transparency and it's about visibility and i actually believe that many of the discussions i've had are all coming back to that one one point and i think we should we should we should play that up you will not [Laughter] we're moving three to two yeah and and and an excellent and proactive communicator who values the frequent the frequent engagement and uses and make sure that it's in um alignment with what we're talking about all right so marty and chuck and i will get that to you perfect i'll be standing by and so i have emotional oh you want to do it now i've been i have a motion on the table and

057a second fiber uh centers no motion carries thank you ever so much for all your work thank you thank you thank you welcome to working all right we're gonna i'm gonna get this to you soon okay guys waiting for it marty okay can we can you drop the three of them so they can continue on and we think you should do one just yes sure gently draw um to our next very exciting topic may have a motion to approve the minutes of the february 16th meeting and the special meeting on the 28th so thank you yeah yeah okay i usually forget that for those of you in the audience i've historically forget um budget stand take it away i'll let you guys catch up sorry just take a deep breath almost there great uh we

058think we've settled on an appropriate budget for next year the process began in october with our current year enrollment figures and is culminating with the budget adoption hopefully tonight and a referendum in may um the work we have left is reviewing where we left off at the last board meeting uh the changes have been made since then and uh where we are now as the board will hopefully consider adopting uh the budget uh so next slide connie please uh we left the february meeting with the proposed 2223 budget under the cap at 51 million 47 724 after further analysis by the finance committee over the last few weeks changes to that figure included a reduction in one budget line for tax certiary expense of 125 000 which was recommended by the finance committee and also

059an increase of 95 which represents an additional third grade section uh for next year uh that moving the current second grade from five sections to six next year which is recommended by the superintendent so that gets us to a proposed budget of 51 million 17 862. a tax levy increase of 2.15 percent uh which is about 50 000 under uh our calculated projection cap of 2.26 uh next slide and this just gives you a graphic representation of where that falls within uh say the last decade or so it's right right in this sweet spot of where we've been especially on the expenditure side coping with a few revenue items which brings the tax levy a little over two percent um but still within uh well under our calculated cap next slide please uh this is

060a pie chart that shows the blue pacman that really demonstrates that we're a personnel driven organization all the shaded blue areas included include personnel salary and benefits the direct personnel costs so 75 of what we do is is direct uh human interaction um outside of that you know we there's contractual codes probably the next biggest one and then debt service you take those out of there you know that that alone gets us over 90 percent of our budget so in calculating our levy next year we are appropriating 500 000 uh from our projected fund balance to offset that levy which is uh consistent where we've been over the last number of years we're a little higher last year uh so we're reducing that figure um and we we do bring in uh revenue split fairly

061evenly between state aid and other sources of almost five million dollars to help offset um what we need to raise uh via the taxpayers of bronxville and again we are under the cap by about 50 next slide what does that say for our tax rate um right now the preliminary assessment role uh which is it's gonna be updated in a few weeks uh is at three billion two hundred twenty nine million one hundred forty nine thousand five hundred ninety six dollars that's actually an increase of about 3.3 percent over prior years now since that that assessment role is up higher than the levy it actually leads to a reduction in the tax rate of about 1.12 uh so last year um it was about point uh i think it was about 14.2 roughly yes 14.2

062yeah exactly so now we're down to about 14.1 uh if you take that to just a simple math home assessed to 2 million in the current year paying 28 529 that uh if the assessment stays the same that's that same uh property would pay 210 in school taxes and this is just a graphic or a table representation of where that fits in compared to prior years it's right line with the historical range since full value assessment over a decade ago between the low of 13.3 and a high of 14.3 um so basically a typical home in bronxville will pay about 1.4 of its assessed value of property taxes and that's where we are so we've had we have a resolution to adopt like any comments from the finance committee um yeah listen nobody likes to

063pay taxes and you know and yeah and especially bronze circus are high but i think the last couple years have been a little bit tough trying to figure out the budget the increases with the pandemic and what we're spending costs on so i think this is a pretty good outcome for uh a tough historic look back for two years to see where we've been and i think you know hopefully next year we're gonna get back to having some comparisons um and we can look at and see what some of the increases maybe we can say save some dollars but let us down as said 70 75 percent of our budgets pretty much fix day one because once you have a teacher's contract and you know what the state gives us for the pension contribution that's

06475 percent our budget so we're really working with about a third you know 25 30 of our budget that we do try to save as much as you can from taxpayers and i think you know with a couple of changes i think it's a fair budget i'm also looking at a time where inflation is going crazy on us too any comments and questions from the board members just just noting that we have discussed this this is the first time we're bringing this up and it's not we have had weekend sessions yeah it is a requirement for a roll call i would go alphabetically by last night if you need a motion and that would be helpful yes jennifer yes arlene yes okay thank you everybody especially thanks to dan and all of this team who

065have done the yeoman work to get us where we are thank you [Applause] thank you very much before i give my update my report i'm going to uh pass the account over to isabella center our student rep to go first give a brief report on what's been going on over the past four months from the student end a very significant thing was the mastermind date being lifted generally it's had a very very positive response from kids obviously that's meant some rule changes for contact racing quarantine and i mean i just think we're gonna have to be constantly adjusting to everything that's going on around us for quite a while but generally a very positive response i can say personally that just being able to see my teachers and my peers faces makes interactions feel so

066much more normal not that we haven't gotten used to where last all the time but i think it was a big relief we just came out of a very successful winter season we had our boys basketball team go farther than the program's ever gone i think and our track team sent several relays to the nationals this year and the rules changing kind of aligned with the end of the championship season which is kind of nice because we've got a lot of student support and they opened up the student section for basketball games which was very popular and a great segue to like you said a more spirited springtime um entering the spring we have a lot of exciting things coming up we have world language week this week which we have foreign language clubs and

067classes just celebrating culture and language throughout the week and something that's been in the works for quite a while now is service week which is taking place next week and a ton of different clubs are participating by through either an active service or just an activity related to or spreading awareness about what they do in their club so i know a lot of like clothing drives charities things of that sort are going on next week so that should be pretty exciting uh we're entering our spring season now which we're also very optimistic about um some things going on in the arts we have the school of spring musical this year's legally blonde which right i know pretty well too and i know for sure it will be very fun to watch so that's something to

068look out for um in june and we also have our society was hosting an open mic night tonight um so i think it's the third year doing that so it's nice to see students getting involved and stuff and kind of changing gears to something very important but um very current right now too is a lot of student-led initiatives in efforts to support ukraine we had a couple of seniors come up to the sfl earlier on to propose a bake sale uh which all the proceeds went directly to week in ukraine and it was very successful i think the first day they were selling debris like over 300 um we have a supply drive coming up for refugees in the next coming weeks we also have the model u1 club bringing the speaker for service week

069next week um who is a ukrainian refugee women in yonkers now after the country so it's very nice to see like global awareness and student engagement going on um that was an important point and from a quality of life standpoint something that's been pretty enduring throughout the year as you also mentioned was the use of technology for communication between students and teachers especially relevant now we had our quality of life committee present to faculty about how to improve google classrooms to make it most efficient and to its fullest extent it's very important to students kind of as a way to lower their stress too to know what's going on from an online standpoint and just using technology in the best way possible and also since we had our mastermind gate lifted we have more positive

070cases and more students having to go on zoom and that's always tough already with learning online but making sure to post notes for students who are on zoom keeping them as engaged and participated as possible yeah and looking ahead into the spring like i said we have a lot of exciting things coming up a junior senior prom in may but that's also not to say this is a very stressful time for a lot of kids um ap exams are coming up a little sooner than i would like but um and we're also nearing the end of the quarter which is typically takes up a lot academically and can be very very stressful but i think it's been just an entirely year of managing and adjusting and i'm sure that that's not going to be any

071different so so i'm just going to pick up a little bit on some of the mentions that school said about the covid stuff so we continue to test every week so people still want to get tested please if you haven't provided consent you can still do that we're still testing roughly 300 or so each week our infection rate is about percent or slightly below one percent so we're still doing pretty well even though there's been some slight uptick on the number of positive cases i would say since the masks uh have been made optional but due to the new quarantine rules etc it doesn't have as much of a major impact on kids missing school because they can come back with mascon et cetera after take five the other thing i wanted to mention is

072that similar to the february break prior to the april break we're going to distribute the take home rapid test kits again and ask that all staff and students take time to do the rapid test before they come back to school just so we can make sure when you come back everybody's as healthy as we can possibly make them and the other thing i want to do is just commend the student body for not only you know getting through this with us but since the masks have been optional we still have some students who choose to wear masks some teachers who choose to wear a mask that was concerned that there would be some peer pressure involved in that but i have to tell you we really haven't seen that and our kids have really risen

073to the occasion so hats off to the student body i'd like to go into some um happy things the student achievement district achievement type things tonight and share some of the good work that has been going on going on in the school and the first thing is that i want to mention that the bronzeville elementary school has been notified by the new york state ed department that has been nominated for united states as part of that blue ribbon award based on its overall academic performance so mr mccor is currently working on completing the application for that uh process from bringing it out to the usdoe in april and we're hopeful and confident that the application will be approved and received and we'll get notified that the school be at blue ribbon school which is quite

074a nice feather i always get concerned about saying before it happens but we're going to start paying this cross but it's nice to be nominated nonetheless on the high school side just so you know this year we've had four national merit finalists last year we also had four uh mouse frank isaiah weir andrew zenkin patrick wu we've had 12 national merit commended students as well this year our senior class we have 30 ap scholars and what that means is students have scored three or higher at least three ap exams 22 students with honors meaning they scored at least a 3.25 on all of their exams and we also have 18 students with distinction meaning they scored an average of 3.5 on all the exams they've taken ap exams they've taken this year we are we

075do have 324 students enrolled in at least one ap course with a plan 813 exams to be administered in may so when isabelle talks about that stress level 813 times over it will happen some other highlights that i'd like like to just mention we had our first student run theater production this year i know we've mentioned in the past but it's worth mentioning together it's really terrific we've had several students few students receive some scholastic art and writing award competition so freshman leah macy won for her uh competition in creative writing we had a junior andrew doyle one of silver keaton honorable mention in scholastic art and writing awards for his artwork a senior one of our seniors aaron foley is working with nasa's climate change research initiative after her summer internship and is in

076the process of getting the paper published in a professional journal journal regarding her work um another senior grace grandmas is one of 60 nominees across the united states for the 2022 u.s presidential scholar in the arts she's also a 2022 young arts finalists in the category of voice singer songwriter another senior olivia cervasco who received an honorable mention award writing for her screenplay first lady astronauts in the 2022 young arts competition and finally we did compete in the regional national history day competition and so excited that we have 28 of our students freshmen sophomores who did well and will be moving on to the state competition moving forward so [Applause] oh a compensation day sure next thing on my agenda is also exciting so um as you may know uh or may not know we

077built in four emergency closing days into our student uh into our school calendar and as part of the bta future association contract if we do not use all the emergency closing days we have to get back one of the days as a comp comp day we only use three this year i was close i only use three um so there's a resolution for the board's uh consideration to approve april 18th which is the monday after easter as the comp day to have school first so that's the resolution and the community said yes okay so i'm gonna have a resolution to um move move thank you appreciate it second all in favor aye you'll need to repeat what's already here dr kelly the floor george yes thank you good evening everybody um i have a quick

078agenda before you this evening to consider i just want to echo um isabella first of all thank you your reports are always really informative and it's so important that we hear the student voice at the board level so thank you and i love that you mentioned the difference it has made with the masked mandate being worked at because the adults in the building feel the same way um to be able to see our students um in the hallways in their classrooms and i just think it's it's really improved the overall level of engagement so um thank you for noting that as well so in terms of the resolutions we've had an opportunity to speak about some of the personnel issues in executive session you have before you some overages tied to item e as well

079as minor revisions to both middle school advisors and teacher mentors due to a new leap replacement that we wanted to make sure was properly mentored in addition we have a teacher aided resignation as well as a new teacher aid hire as well as a new substitute teacher on tonight's agenda also this is typically the agenda where we ask you to appoint the election personnel for the annual school budget building board election which will be on may 17th this year as well as the um compensation rates and then again there were a few adjustments to our special other stipend list we are looking to offer the williamsburg trip this year but for eighth graders because they were not able to take that last year so we need to pay a faculty member to help coordinate that

080as well as a few revisions to the spring coaches roster so i ask you to consider items a through n do you have any questions or comments move i have a motion to approve audience eight through end okay all in favor all right thank you dr kelly dan i'll start with the uh updated risk assessment and recommended audit plan the audit committee met with the team from accum partners to review the updated risk assessment as required by the new york state comptroller regulations acute partners interviews our staff administrators and select board members in updating their risk assessment all rating categories were consistent with prior years uh with four categories improving slightly while the government aid grants increased slightly as we are seeing more federal aid in the current year with coveted etc and the recommended

081focus area for internal audit is purchasing in accounts payable this year and the article will commence immediately do you want to mention this yes we also discussed at the audit committee meeting uh the possibility of having uh another cyber audit i think you know we we last did a technology on it a couple of years ago but i mean that's like uh that's light years in the way things are moving now literally um so we're we're looking into um commissioning an audit uh really bowler any vulnerability or penetration that we might be vulnerable to yeah you're going for an rfp is that yeah yep and we're also doing rfps for both an internal auditor and an independent auditor as required every five years so a lot of auditing activity coming up so we have a

082motion to approve the risk assessment is it included in your agenda second thank you all in favor all right any opposed unless you carries anything else on your side uh well february results are in the projection for the current year still calculating a little over 500 000 in surplus which is about one percent um in general expenditures uh should be more accurately projectable in the next report as the settlement with the bta teachers contract is to be executed and implemented by the end of this month uh i want to really really thank tony hernandez our payroll clerk and barbara battagliano our personnel assistant because the middle of the year settlement is very complicated and uh these are the two who really uh implementing this uh this uh change in the middle of the year at

083the ground level send them our thanks we'll do uh and this settlement is around the range initially anticipated so i don't see a significant additional surprise arising from any changes of this settlement and uh let's see and our the surplus this year is really driven by revenues more than expenditure savings so we'll get the half a million to offset the tax levy for next year no concern don't think yeah no concerns no financial action items moving on to facilities i also want to reiterate that it's great to see paces again but staff and students preferring or required required to wear masks are more than welcome to do so uh we are ready for spring activities i just saw the first half of the lacrosse game out there the new mats are out by the track

084um uh we are however getting a little squeezed on baseball field availability um we use scout field and uh the county is also offering scout field to a yonkers school this year that's in the mix um you know when the concordia transaction finally works itself out you know we really we want to try and pry that field or use of that field if we can we don't know if they if iona intends to keep it a baseball field or not looks terrible i know i know we would maintain it so if anybody has contacts without uh who can put uh put us in touch with a a good word we'd appreciate it um we um let's see we're also closing out building project over the next uh month or two and there's no facilities action

085items yeah great thank you dan um item i believe all the foreign oh strategy and curriculum i apologize thank you we had a quick meeting um we also had a number of guests we went over three different units a follow-up on the child soldier soldiers unit which is in the eighth grade civil rights unit the fifth grade and the week of service at the high school okay and your next meeting is has it been scheduled yet no no okay but three of us will be going to the april 5th i think that's the right date correct me all right okay good good thank you not as a committee but three of us will be down thank you our next meeting is on april 19th it is our regular meeting just so you know and so

086now we turn to the point of public discussion as i mentioned at the beginning it's unusual for us to have such a large crowd so once again thank you very very much this is an opportunity for us to hear from you on your views we really do welcome these this time because it is our chance to not only learn from you but to look at issues from almost 360 degrees so thank you for your participation because we do have so many people tonight i would invite that we invite you to keep your um your your information first very concise so that we have opportunity for everybody to speak um if you find that the speaker before you has expressed your point of view that's good wow um i'm going to hope that we can limit

087this to an hour um we'll see how we do though um tom says is he better um so actually i was going to share with you that tom sent out an email today about a michigan school michigan yeah no yeah the board president choked another board member and it was awesome i just keep imagining and i shared it with everybody else so i'm not the bad guy and i'm certainly not inviting choking okay good idea comments or questions um particular individuals please address meet with roy privately on those issues just out of courtesy with respect to others um and always we're always available to answer any questions as well so with that open it up um please ask if you tell us who your your name of course and don bringle a dear friend thank

088you arlene my name is don brandle i have two seventh graders in school and uh boy and girl uh thank you for allowing me just to address the the board i appreciate it very much i think a couple comments i think from both thomps regarding the presentation from the search firm and i think the thing that interests me is that i feel the same way about what was presented those could apply to any school in westchester county but they could apply to any school probably anywhere they're all very good comments but i think any superintendent would want to live up to all five of those so my question is and arlene you asked me not to put anybody on the spot but i'm going to try i don't know if roy or jack have been

089questioned by the search firm in particular but i think for all of us we would like to know apart from those five uh criteria criteria you know some of the things that i just thought about here i'd like to know roy why you choy chose bronxville and jack i'm not sure how many times you were a superintendent i think it was more than once 35 years absolutely so you know the things that come to my mind local area commute pay student body parental involvement climate expectations curriculum standards those are sort of the meat of why i would think a superintendent comes to this school or any other school could you tell all of us uh why maybe starting with jack why you chose one or two of your school if there was a consistent theme

090and then i don't know if anybody's asked roy from the search firm why he chose bronxville and i think that's important for the search firm to know what were the criteria that roy used even though he was part of that same search firm's search but why did roy come to bronxville jack want to go first sure we're only trying to find one person it'd be nice if we have several really good people to choose from but we're not really interested in a hundred candidates who are interested in finding the right person and i'm going to pick up on the sort of opposite side of tom's question highly involved community high expectations the idea of moving to the next level there are communities that talk about that but they're perfectly happy to be where they are

091on the list of national nationally ranked school districts there's a level of complacency they don't say that complacent but they are um to me what's exciting about brooksville is that there has been a tremendous amount of change we are a substantially better school district today than when our children went to this district substantially better and if you are somebody who is really interested in pushing out the envelope that makes this exciting that's where those words uh have a different meaning to me the words don't mean that much and i appreciate the word spectic that went on there's nothing wrong with that but i think what we hire why we hired this firm is for their connections on one hand and their understanding of bronxville the school district the community on the other my guess is

092that we will find some the person we find will be somebody who is not out seeking a job they are not going to be looking at education week they're not going to be looking at other places they're going to be somebody that this group of people finds some of you may know my wife is a head hunter she goes out looking for candidates she seeks out people i want them to seek out people the conversation passed me but i wanted to ask them that question and the people that they find who are excited about bronxville and the opportunity it offers somebody professional are not about commuting not about those other things they're really about pushing out the envelope and if something's not i hope they don't apply i mean really this this should be exciting

093to somebody somebody should should hear marty or or susan or chuck talk and say wow that is a great opportunity i'm having a terrific time where i am but this is a great opportunity so i hope that answers your question i went to different places for different reasons but i was always driven to be pushing the envelope out so that was your consistent theme yeah all right yeah so i did have a chance to speak with certain sections you know it's interesting because you know what you really want to say about broncos it's hard to say than that you know and to jack's point the words for somebody as a person those you're going to find similar things in other districts but brownsville does carry a reputation and for me it was a reputation of

094bronze building community the uniqueness of the k-12 building which was said it was about the work it was about promise it was about for me the fit that i felt where i wanted to do the kind of work that i wanted to be engaged in fit in well with what i was learning about bronxville and brownsville promise so it was that i thought i could come in and have a very similar philosophical makeup about education and it seemed at the right place but the other thing i would add is you know when superintendents go out with the partner of the job they're going to pick up the phone and call me because i'm retiring if i was being fired they may not call me but or they might um but they'll pick a phone and

095talk about it and when you go in for an interview it's almost you know i was interviewing brownsville as much as i hoped they weren't doing me because you wanted to make sure it was going to work um you know as an experience to protect you're not going to leave a place to leave it you want to make sure it's going to you know be a good opportunity so those kind of things combined and reputation and speaking with colleagues that's what attracted me and the tennis outfit right and tom's kind of stopped it said visual i'll never get out from jersey right i did well i was working in new york at the time prior to that i every two years in jersey roy was the first one we interviewed we watched it yeah he

096never forget what school district did you come from i'm sorry well i was in these things jersey i was in ramsey my own house 2012 superintendent of the year and you immediately left before you could catch up jack he ashley barney thank you for for allowing me to speak here i personally participated in the process i was in one of the focus groups in person focus group and i i think the the consulting group did a very good job out of those my question though is out of those five paragraphs of criteria specs um and they're and they're all you know important i just want to make sure that the board isn't losing sight of something very simple but critical and um and that is academic excellence because let's face it somebody can be a

097great communicator but if the school's academics fall off a cliff and academic ratings plummet that's not really that important at the end of the day so i know there was some reshuffling i'm not quite sure how you guys all worked that out but i hope that number one at the top of that list of shuffling is going to be a superintendent who's absolutely committed academic excellence at this institution and we'll not only keep it here and maintain it but we'll try to improve it that was number one it'll stay number one excellent thank you yeah you know you mentioned something um when i was in portland city of 50s with 56 000 students in the school district a group of us were sitting around talking about the mission for the school and the fact that

098almost no one pays any attention to it after it's written and we started boiling it down and we boiled it down as far as we could and it was all students achieve no excuses no exceptions i i think that that is non-negotiable excellent excellence in the sense of every single kid achieving not twenty percent thirty percent getting aps and the rest of the kids falling off it is every kid and achieving at a high level at a competitive level where they can go out into the world not only college but beyond ready to contribute as a person as a citizen um and so that's where their track record becomes really important right so we will make sure we'll go back and look at all the districts that they've been to and look at their rankings

099and their ap rates and all that stuff and make sure that they are of equal or may be better well didn't we didn't we recently in the last year or two obtain our highest rating in new york state ever under dr montesano i mean and that because i'm out of here in three months and six days um but you know um i have been on here for a little while and it's you know all getting aside you know that is never academic excellence has never been out of anybody that i've dealt with at this school not once ever out of their sight not it's just it just hasn't um and i think when you know dr montesano's reading the rather impressive frankly annoyingly impressive uh credentials of some of our young people and their accomplishments

100making me feel bad and inadequate but fine um i you know i really i really stress that um because there have been some disagreements lately okay and there have been some different perspectives lately and now that's well and good and we haven't had youtube moments which is all the better but let's not lose sight of the fact that this school is really an excellent school and if anybody says otherwise they're full of um hi support my name is liam herrity i graduated last year um i'm currently a student at yale university um i wanted to thank you for letting me speak and for two quick things i wanted to highlight first of all how grateful i am for dr montesano and how great a job he did as superintendent and how excited i am to

101see that isabella is also staying aside as being able to you know voice student opinion in the school um i wanted to mention two things about rockstar that i really admired and something that really you know helped me um and the fact that leads to this next superintendent search one i believe really is the fact that broxville does uh to all of your echo your points really focus on academic excellence and while i credit everyone in school for that i think there's a primary and outstanding effort to our faculty to our teachers who develop such invested interest in their students both academically and on a personal level which i think is very rare and i think it's worth highlighting both health and members for administration and other faculty work together to create those bonds for

102students um secondly uh i watched these uh board meetings since my junior year of high school um long before anyone showed up to these meetings i can have many of my friends attest to that including my principles um and i was and i continued to still watch them even even at yale so as i was watching uh last month on thursday my typical board meeting i was shocked to see there were so many people here and and i don't want to call anyone out but there were a lot of in my opinion really nasty complaints against dr katkie who has in my mind and having worked with her on several occasions um been one of the greatest administrators i think i've seen in in the district period um dr keckey during kovit was one of

103the first people to help try to suggest new policies and new events that our student body could do when it didn't seem like we could do anything um dr keke was honestly probably one of the leading factors to why our school continues to be and still is such a great success um and into the guidelines of curriculum which are so important in our school um it was disheartening to see you know such a flagrant attack on on her judgment in instituting new policies for our curriculum and while i think that's important i think that underlying everything is the discussion of um of being of being a critical thinker that's one of the tenants of the wrongful promise um and haven't written six essays on the proximal promise in critical thinking um and i contest now

104yale uh one of the primary things is being able to evaluate claims and gather evidence and make arguments um and in discussion last month about whether or not uh topics of race and identity and diversity equity inclusion ought to be conducive in our in our curriculum and almost felt in some way of of some limitation on on the thing we could discuss in class in fact as a student at least i know being able to discuss these things um broadly and openly in a community with my peers and with my family so close by um is an experience that isn't modeled at a college or university when you leave and and to be quite frank these conversations happen everywhere i think we'd be blind to say that they don't um so if we want to

105you know consider our children if we want to remain a school of excellence in sending our students to prestigious universities and you know colleges across the country um education of this will be education of race of sexual orientation of a wide variety of equity and inclusion will be incredibly important so i ask you all to especially those who might have echoed the ideas of some parents from last month to really consider having and trusting our really professional and really really really talented administrators and being able to adapt curriculum in a way that's conducive to all of our students so that they can grow and really be at the best of their potential [Applause] so i'd like to respond of course because i started a discussion about pbi and i did you sign the change.org position

106i did not know so um when i questioned mara if critical race theory was going to be introduced into the school she responded i was concerned that white children were going to be taught that they were oppressors and everyone else was going to be taught that they are the victims and everything else would step from there so that was my main concern because i don't want my son who he might know get this into his soul and his mind that he is he is a bad person he did not you know murder george floyd sorry um he he did not he was not around 400 years ago when slavery was prevalent in the world i do not agree that we should not talk about race of course we should talk about race in fact i

107think mara cocky in one of her emails said that the school does an amazing job already about incorporating these principles in school i mean the people that promulgated the change.org condition demanding critical race theory in the school talked to her they are the bronzo civic reformers and they were satisfied that the bronx school was doing a good job all right okay so that was my main concern so when she responded to me i didn't feel that she answered me 100 so i filed the freedom of information law request of dan carlin as i'm allowed to do and i got some information and i found out that this hackman consultant was hired by the school to come in and speak to faculty and staff over many days along with talking scrubs and you know talk about

108white supremacy and talk about how white teachers need to unpack their privilege as if all white teachers are privileged are we talking about white people too or just people that work in this district i'm not unpack their sure you know and and you know get off their high horse um when they're talking about race and it all seems so wrong to me to target white people like that and i mean as a person of italian background i know italian descent white italians were treated like blacks earlier in the century they were lynched in the south they were not allowed to get jobs they had problems irish too i mean we're lumped together in this white group of people and it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor white you just it's just all bad for

109you it's just you're just wrong and i really feel like when you're teaching kids that that they're privileged you know it's it's really critical to them it's abusive it's immensely and i don't know how you feel about that i mean i know how you might feel about kids in this village because a lot of them have comfort money but not all my kids come for money i mean white people in travel parks they're not getting affirmative action because they're white and for little kids to be taught this it's damaging i think there's a lot a sense fear in in in a lot of what we had last time and also with some of your comments i think that he is the first to listen and really engage in the dialogue and also to trust that

110we're all coming from a position of looking at what's best for our community nobody's out to sabotage and we're coming from a place of trust and i think the work that you're doing at the advisory group i hope helps to rebuild the trust and i hope it's center central tenet is to listen to each other and understand that listening doesn't mean that you're going to agree with me but at least i can listen to you and understand so thank you others oh all right my name is cynthia milton i am a high school math teacher and i'm also a resident and this is my 19th year at long story second year teaching the first thing i want to say is um when mara pepe she almost single-handedly straightened out common core math we all owe

111her a tremendous debt of gratitude as a math teacher i certainly do so i didn't want to say that the second thing is i want to say is um i want to talk a little bit about teachers and professional development every administrator here wishes that they could do a professional development day and teachers would immediately go out and change the way they're teaching that's not reality so i was at those they were zoomed for one thing and what i heard was a pretty standard uh discussion of language of microaggression which i have known about i've heard about have had discussed for at least 35 years and years i've been teaching and like most teachers at those professions at that professional day first of all we were zooming we were all exhausted because we had been

112because we were zooming and we were doing double time and lesson plans and i can just tell you it's like any professional development day you go oh that's kind of nice to hear okay now let's let's do tomorrow what are you doing tomorrow i am so far behind so you really i think we all really need some perspective about what happens when mara or rachel or ann invites and us a consultant to come and talk to us it's an opinion we listen to it some of us pick it up and use it math teachers were like oh what does this have to do wait so and also just to point out that the faculty at bronzeville are not stupid they are not easily swayed they're not woke they're not particularly conservative they're just people who

113think they're also people who care a lot about children and i do not know a single member a single colleague who would teach a class and and make children hate themselves and in fact one of the professional development consultants we had or one of the meetings we had for the high school teachers was how to have discussions in class to give students room to voice their feelings how how to allow children to have discussions without forcing a belief on anybody but making room for diverse opinions and that's where my colleagues are mostly coming from thank you i'm aaron shafer uh parent have a child in school very encouraging that's great um you know one thing is simple like you don't fight racism with more racism and so like that description that you just provided is

114great so that's why it's so bizarre to have someone like hakama coming to the school just didn't make sense when we tried to get information around it it wasn't transparent because her vision is not that it's not an open discussion it's it's racism it's bigoted it's hate and you don't fight any race with mortys anyways i was here for the search um so one of the points in the discussion group i went to was the trade-off piece between someone who has a long successful track record but then they're toward the end of their career so they might not have a lot of time dedicated to bronzeville and maybe because they're savvy or even so soon so it seems like we just got here right and so versus someone who can come and dedicate a long

115time right and be here for 10 or 20 years but that they'd be more youthful more inexperienced and how to balance those in are we not looking at someone who's a potential young rock star but could come in and have longevity here versus someone who's at the end of their career but a very successful career they could come in but would be here for a limited time so that trade offers that being looked at yeah well and i actually came up in the focus group so i had spent some time in school leadership about that and um actually the average age of a first year of a superintendent is 56. and that's because it is a a job based upon experience right oh um and then you go into what they call the central office

116then you become like these these individuals are professionals or central office employees you probably spend some time as an assistant superintendent um and then you ultimately make the jump to the superintendent when we were interviewing we actually interviewed several assistant superintendents thinking okay do you take the bet that they'll make a good superintendent um and we ultimately included that given this community its it's education you really need somebody who's kind of got some chops and got some backbone and grit and that comes from experience and so it is it is a trade-off that we have to make i would just add as well part of the reason for the later stage of life that people get to be super 10 is because there's more risk involved right because um other central office positions that exist

117this tends to have tenure superintendents don't have tenure they work on three four or five year contracts that can be renewed or not renewed you know depending on how things go and you're always running the risk of board members changing the board coming in want to make a change so that's that goes into that as well and um certainly you made a good point and it's a tough bounce for the board to to see but just because someone's young also doesn't mean they will be here you know 10 plus years either they could be looking for a larger school district say who knows right or it just doesn't work out um so i think it's more important to find the right fit in my opinion than necessarily an age thing we we met with younger

118people the last time around um and you know one of them was like right around the finalist group right and um and one thing i've learned is that there is a lot of mobility among superintendents for whatever reason jack's had like 35 jobs and uh but there in all seriousness there is a lot of mobility it's also part of the balance is this isn't really a community where you know an on-the-job kind of thing can happen right so yeah i know we struck a balance and we had an open mind on everybody um and you know i think obviously we picked the right one but um but you know these the school leadership brought great candidates uh they weren't great uh at the end of the day compared to dr montesano um i'm gonna have

119to do something awful to you by the way because i've been complimenting you i know but you know frankly they they put some people in front of us who sucked um and and we moved on from those people so uh we had a broad variety of gender uh of ages of where they came from points in their points in their careers and stuff they did a good job about putting bodies in front of us so we had kind of a basis upon which to make a judgment others sir hi good evening uh my name is bill greeley uh 30 in resident my two kids are currently out of the school i just want to comment on the superintendent's search there's been so much talk tonight about the bronxville promise um i think the trustees over

120to the community to take a page from the bronx promise that is under innovate it says recognizing the opportunity for improvement taking risks to create solutions that add value or serve a need that is i think the school should practice what the promise preaches and expand the superintendent search beyond those in the education sector given that countless talented managers slash executives in the private sector have successfully made the jump from one industry to another why not brought their search to private sector executives if we were looking of course for a physics teacher we wouldn't be contacting english teachers because their roles are so specialized what we're looking for is a top-notch administrator and so i don't think it's necessarily someone who has to have a background in the education sector and in a word i

121like to go fishing when i fish in a pond i don't catch many keepers when i fish in the ocean i catch bigger and much better fish thanks very much if i could address that because it came up in the focus groups as well um so i did reach out to our the school's attorney to understand really what were the constraints that we're dealing with um so generally we do have to hire an educator because the new york state law requires superintendents to hold proper certification and that's called a school district leader certification and that comes from usually a master's degree in education three years of teaching experience and then passing these examinations the um a school district can petition the commissioner of education for an exemption i remembered kathy black i believe was her

122name was an individual in new york state sorry the new york city system that they petitioned and were granted an exception for her um and that was because of the size of the area within the city that she was dealing with and and the fact that there would be such a solid group below her that would have the masters of education etc um our attorney was very clear with me that she thought a school our size would not be able to receive such an exception yeah so thanks so much no i appreciated the question originally and we did the research thanks so much thank you sorry i know i just wanted to quickly touch back briefly to something said first of all i really appreciate everything you said as well as one of my teachers

123i loved her but back to what you said about training teachers about how to speak to students i've been at brownsville since the first grade and obviously much more sensitive heavier topics come up a lot more towards high school but throughout my entire time here i think i've participated in every class in very open and inviting discussions and i think teachers are very very encouraging of that kind of thing um i remember even like walking out of assemblies or specific conversations in classes and being really impressed with the kinds of conversations that me and other students were able to uphold and keep going and like teachers have to stop us at the end of class because the class period is over but we have so much momentum and just want to keep discussing things um

124it's also like a learning opportunity to learn from other people's opinions and what they have to say you learn a lot about a person and about whatever you're discussing um and i just think that's a big part of the academic excellence the kind of open discussions that were like so eager to have and so encouraged to have and that's something i really appreciate from education yes i can't say it better than liam can you just say your name oh hi i'm jen redman my family's been in the school district for 11 years and i have logged more hours in this school than i care to tell you all about and and so um last when i watched um last week there are the previous um board of ed meeting um and knowing that we're hiring

125a superintendent i became a little worried that that somebody watching it might think that that characterized the parents of our school um and that just doesn't doesn't square with the experience that i've had or the experience that my children had it doesn't square with liam's experience it doesn't square with isabella's experience it doesn't square with ms maupin's experience i mean i have pictures of tom wilson playing dodgeball with the kids that i'm holding for another day um i've you know seen this buyer go through challenge success and like if somebody told you that you worked in a really successful high school and then they told you that they were going to challenge the notions by which you were successful and you said yeah i'm up for that work that's miss meyer um talk about how

126to raise an adult and you know working with mara to try to bring empathy and understanding um through discussions over a book topic she was a master of just you know coming together with parents and then presenting and and encouraging discussion it's just this is not what my experience has been um and i just wanted the teachers and our administrators to know that the parents you have our respect that you have our gratitude um and that apparently from the data collected you have everybody else's that that's that's the spirit of our community and it's important to say that out loud in public and it's also important to say that we respect your expertise we we respect your professionalism um we respect your humanity and your dignity um you've earned it um and you have the

127right to do your job without fear and intimidation and that those are not acceptable qualities in our community open communication collaboration calm community building common ground that is what we stand for it's what happens in the playground it what happens on the park place it's what happens in our churches it's what happens at our ms high school pta meetings that's what happens um and that's what we're about um and we should continue that tradition thanks uh i'm ted harry i am a junior at high school and i serve on the dei committee for the high school i just wanted to kind of reiterate a lot of these sentiments expressed by my brother isabella i've had this model there's never been a time especially in these committee meetings where there's teachers students and faculty where i've

128ever felt any sense of white guilt or i've ever felt uh like the word privilege was a word that came to attack who i am as a person it and i just i i can't see how um sorry i can't see how i can't see how dr kent is getting so scrutinized for this and i i'm sorry i don't want this to have a debate can i ask for a moment do we have any in the queue any questions okay thank you okay so the reason why um i agree the community should be nice and everyone should get along right but the consultant that was brought in that was recommended to the school and who was hired by dr cocky was promoting a feeling that whiteness needs to be eliminated that the words associated with

129whiteness and it's all in the foil that's all in words associated with whiteness need to be eliminated and excellence which we've been talking about all night is one of those words in her presentation so she had been given she had been giving these workshops over a period of time so that was the issue we were worried as parents that teachers were taking this and putting it into the curriculum now i'm so glad that teacher spoke and said you know we analyze this information critically and we look at it and we make our own decisions um you know someone brought that consultant here and they're in the room and i'm not going to point that person out but you know that's why we have that issue last month that's the reason i mean just just for

130just for everybody this consultant was here as i understand it for a total of three hours i just want us to keep that in contract because she was here for three hours so all in a row or different days i don't think it matters but it was a while ago okay so a year dr montesano you formed this committee for the purpose of an ongoing discussion with anybody who wants to have that discussion right i mean and i think we're all for open and and getting you know having frank discussion on an important topic right right and i do believe it's important that we everybody is given the space to be critical thinkers i think this is not gonna make a great point of that um i've attended those dei sessions for other boards i've

131served on and i looked at what she did and to be honest exactly what i heard down in north carolina and it wasn't that it was funneled into me i took what i needed from it and moved on and i just as mrs mountain said so i think for us to move on we need to let go of all this time my name is elizabeth brangwell i have two children in the school and i just actually want to reiterate what you're saying arlene which is that i think we're all coming to this room we care so much about our kids about the future of our school they think something that's so important for us to keep in mind is our future superintendent is watching us our children will watch this we will watch this in

132history and we something happened last year some of us agree with that choice some of us don't that's great in the community that we can talk about that but i am so worried about what happens in the future i think maybe that's something that can unify all of us we don't know what's to come in the 21st century challenges will come our way our children's way and i think it's vital that we learn to accept the things that have happened and to move on we may agree with them we may not but i'm so concerned that the superintendent may be watching this and wondering what to do in the community that can't move beyond a choice that some of us agree to when some of us didn't if we can't show that as a community

133we can accept each other's differences [Applause] so do i have a motion