001go ahead um so i determined that we have a quorum and uh the board of ed will move to executive session to discuss other matters the disclosure of disclosure of which would result in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy motion motion second that's it fall in favor yes yes motion carries unanimously everybody could please join me for the pledge of allegiance you please all join me for a moment in silence as we send out our thoughts and our prayers and our hearts to joe herrera and his family thank you very much okay we do have um three things tonight for the superintendent's report so we're gonna go ahead and turn it over to dr masara okay and um yeah uh george thank you for that moment of silence um clearly our community has um suffered
002a devastating loss um you know you know we many of us um are or all of us in in the community are um really saddened uh you know by the events that took place um a couple weeks ago um there's been a tremendous outpouring in our community for the rara family and um you know clearly many of the kids have been impacted um it it's i i'll be honest it's been you know quite unusual though um because the typical grieving that we would normally see in a school isn't necessarily taking place like it has in the past um you know much of the grieving is taking place virtually um where kids are um you know are are staying home and um you know and they're they're with their friends with their family um as opposed
003to you know gathering um within the school uh you know you know we've conceived the past um so you know that's kids have to really find comfort and solace any way they can um and we certainly tried to do everything we could to be there for the rare family and for all the kids um so and we will continue to do what we can to support that um but certainly um a tremendous loss to our entire community so um thank you for that george um and starting in that way thank you um i want to um you know i'll start the report with a with a brief presentation um i have to say that one of the one of the things that you know i i think that we've we've got a a a website
004that's just fine that does a lot of really good things um but also sometimes you know from my standpoint um i know what other websites have done um i've seen functionality that has been um you know exceptional in terms of getting messaging out and being able to interact and do a lot of different things that we just don't have the capability of with our website another drawback of our website is that we host it locally um and that opens us up to some vulnerabilities for things like cyber attacks and such um and so you know in speak with the board uh last year we did make a determination that it would be advisable um to make a switch uh we contracted with um syntax who does just that um does some website redesign and and
005is able to um you know um host it on their own and update our website so with us today is um the chief operating chief executive officer of syntax corrine morton so i would uh introduce corrine and bill i think i'm going to actually need to be made a co-host because corinne sent in my email she sent me a um um a mock-up of the website that we're going to share with the board in the community you got it your host okay so i'm going to open up the link and then i'm going to go back to zoom and i'm going to like that corin yes okay um just give me a second while i open that up all right so um going to turn it over to corinne morton and i will be your
006vanna white corinne you can tell what you want me to do with the actual um with the actual website uh please go to the top for now yeah let me i guess i should open it how do i which i open it with just you got it right there it's perfect yeah you just yeah just leave it in the middle yeah it's just a graphic it's good all right there you go all right so can you pick a fight a little more around does that bother you you didn't you didn't say [ __ ] fight did you i did you just hit the i don't know maybe it's just me i don't know all right i beggified a little bit more george thank you all right oh there we go that's good now i can see the
007small writing okay so all you corinne sorry about that i'm doing my best to help you out here okay so um about a month or so ago right at the start of school we had met with the district administration um to kind of go over what the look of the website you know what are the important features that we would want what is the overall look and feel what are some of the um things that parents typically want to find on on your website uh obviously having done this for many years with predominantly school districts we have a pretty good awareness of the type of thing that or things that you know your community is looking for when they visit your website so after the conversation with the administrators we had um you know come
008back and done a design this mock-up here that you see based on based on that conversation so um the new website will definitely be responsive so it will respond to all of you know you your devices that you're on it will take whatever form if you're on an ipad if you're on an iphone which we see is pretty much the main things that people are using outside of district computers that are issued so you want to make sure that when people are viewing it on those devices that it actually you know conforms to their screen size so up at the top you have um some of your quick links like your phone number your address which are things that people would typically look for uh links to your social media and youtube which i know
009are accessed quite a bit um your center merch awareness center rich's school district that's going to take you home no matter what page you're on the navigation stays the same throughout the entire website so it doesn't change based on whether whether or not you're on a school page or a different page we had also talked about the big picture you see here which is um you know going to connect to some type of small news stories just to kind of change that out that can be done relatively quickly and easily um you know pictures will be sent to syntax for uploading on the website i'll basically run through the mock-up first and then i'll explain what some of the next steps are and what syntax provides as far as um maintenance and things like that
010so um we can run through as many stories as we want if we want to start with five and then up that to any certain number 5 is usually the typical amount it will scroll through those stories on its own however you can use the left and right arrows that you see next to the words in the story so if you scroll down a little bit more this section here has some announcements and that is typically for any letter um anything that you really need the community to see quickly i did forget that at the top if we have we have two forms of notifying your community based on whether or not you know there's a an emergency issue whether you have to close schools or you know those snow days that maybe are no
011longer but there's one that would be a banner that would just scroll across your screen and the other one is actually a pop-up so when you visit the website it would actually have a pop-up screen that shows up and somebody had to clear that out in order to see the actual website so it's really in in your face as far as um notifying the community so then if you scroll down a little bit as i was saying you have the announcement section and those are again typically your letters things like that when you click on one of those links to the left that would take you to a pop-up that opens up that would either have additional information um other links pdfs anything that needs to be downloaded things like that can all be housed
012in there uh we have a link to or actually not a link to but uh the twitter feed which would be embedded right on the page uh at this point i think google apps are pretty much a necessary thing for people to have easy access to so there's a nice little section there for people to get to all of the important google apps and then i know you guys have um a pretty good following on social media so you have a little social media corner with some of your hashtags which can be clickable to bring up any of those things that are inside of the cm positivity in the cm prime and if there's any more that come up you know we can look at adding those underneath that we have the upcoming events which
013would really pull directly from the calendar that's input by by our staff um and obviously this isn't a typical year but on a in a typical year this calendar is usually fairly full um and this would automatically bring um items to the front and then they would fade away as time you know as the day goes on so just like the news stories too everything has a start date and an end date so everything is input and will come down by itself there's no need to go back into the documents or into the website and take them down as long as they're given an end date they will disappear same for the upcoming events they too will just pop on and pop off as that day passes um and then if you scroll down a
014little bit more we have a section here which is for your quick links there we go um and those are just again easy clickable links that we know people are looking for your community your residence parents um you know these are these are your typical um quick links that people people need to get to these can be changed out at any time so these are not something that have to be there uh if you know covid we need that to come down and we can replace that with something else or let's say it's budget time and we want to take student registration off any of these can be taken down or put back up we can also add more and just make it scroll so that um you know if there's none that we want
015to actually take down but we want to add up more we can do that as well and below that we have the three school pictures which would actually bring you to each of those pages more of a design feature and then below that we just have the site footer which also has some easy to find contact information as well as your social media links again and typically everything from the quick links down would remain on every single page so that information stays consistent and is easily defined on all pages as far as how this works in getting built so basically with this design the next phase would be to program this out into our custom management uh custom content management system and um that just makes this plain mock actually function and you'll you know
016we'd actually have functioning pages functioning drop-downs and things like that and from that point forward once we have an actual program site we would then begin migrating content so we have a web team at the office and they would actually take care of moving items from your current website to the new website and making that and building that out once we migrate all of that content a link is shared with the district for review once that review is complete and everything all changes have been made we can then set a date to launch um and then once we launch that you have a brand new uh website that's functioning and also what we do is we would help maintain the website so um there's a tick system that we have people would just email into
017the ticket system those changes will be made to the website and email would get generated back to them that it's been completed and um you know those things typically happen within a 24-hour period if there's anything that's an emergency um there are people at the district that would um would and should have access to the website to post any performance it's very easy it works much like a word editor um you put in a title a start date end date some information and everything is ready to go so it does function pretty um pretty it's pretty easy thank you um i think that that's pretty much the overview of the website i thank you for allowing me to uh display this for you and if you have any questions or i i don't i don't
018have any questions it looks very nice i'm just uh we streamlining number of clicks too that's the goal navigate it yes okay so we'll take the content that's on your current site uh we've already had conversations about streamlining that content and making sure that most of the content is up to date by the time we would start migrating content over to the new website so that this way it's you know pretty streamlined already but we will go through and again having worked with a number of school districts and this being a part of what we do we do have a good awareness of of where things and pages should be so that people can actually find them easily and not have to click and and go down a rabbit hole to find those is there
019going to be an audio option when you scroll over things for say somebody who's visually impaired yes there will be the ada compliance compliance um you know something we're always working on i never can say that anything's 100 ada compliant but we are well aware of all of the uh guidelines we do have a little widget that appears on the website to help assist with that ada compliance and most of our sites are work perfectly fine with an e-reader okay that was the only things that i had looks good exciting thank you thank you okay thank you so much karen that that looks great we're excited to have uh to be able to uh work with you on that um welcome thank you for having me here okay thank you thank you nice job with
020the scrolling oh you know it's everybody's got to be good at something george yeah um that's my skill all right so then in the um uh you know a couple other things um you know i would just report out on um you know just just a few things um number one um obviously you know i'd be remiss if i didn't talk about you know the uptick of uh covet cases in suffolk county and what we're seeing um and i think that i want to you know try to be as transparent as possible we're trying to get all the all the information out to the community we are sharing uh you know when positive cases come in that impact our school we do submit letters um you know it it really is a you know a
021challenge trying to keep up with everything because we do have people that are quarantined but not necessarily positive positive cases um however the positive cases that we do have in our school system we do have to update um in our system and we have to update in the state new york state education department uh database um so that reporting is a mandate for us so that new york state education department can track the number of cases in various schools and they do have a site that that tracks that on the state level um to date our first positive case came in october 19th so roughly almost exactly a month to the day ago our first positive case was reported to us um today our last positive case uh was reported to us and in the
022in that month um it's been roughly um a case every other day if you if you factor it in because we have 16 cases that have been reported of those 16 cases 11 have been on in our students three amongst our staff and two in our on our buses um that have been reported to us um so i would say that you know the one thing i i can tell you is that um i'm very proud that you know when we were making decisions over the summer we struggled with with the decisions and and i i think you saw some of that struggle in board of education presentations where i frankly said that i will admit that our reopening plan is not the 100 um most educationally sound plan because we had to defer when
023push came to shove and and the the best educational plan was at odds with the safest plan we had to defer to health and safety um and so what i can say is that um while we have seen um districts with um you know i don't don't want to compare however we have seen districts with much more density have to go down and shut down full buildings for sometimes extended periods of time we have not had a mass quarantine um and many of many of that you know many of those cases are because of the the reopening plan that we put in place um some of the things like the aa bb model um have enabled us because kids have four days off from school have enabled us to be able to stay open because
024you always have to do it a 48-hour look back whenever a positive case comes in and you know timing has been in our favor but also our model has helped us um so the other things that have helped us was um the protocols on our bus with leaving seats empty behind drivers and um you know bus aides um that has helped us other things that have helped us was the um the density in our in our classes because um we are able to maintain success you have a you know a better likelihood lack of you know where you would not spread um i could say that um you know the governor's message um at the start of the school year was wary and apprehensive in terms of schools ability to keep kids and and staff
025safe i think to a person in the health field i think i haven't heard anybody say anything but schools are the safest place for kids to be and that's proven now suffolk county department health services since september has been tracking over 900 cases in over 300 schools and in those situations we have not seen an instance where there has been um a transmission in the actual school itself we are seeing spread that's taken place in the community and that's why you know all our messaging is that the things we're doing in schools uh ppe universal mask wearing maintaining six foot social distance and 12 feet in super spreading events um as well as hand and respiratory hygiene matters and emphasizing those with our kids making sure we're washing our hands those are the things that
026matter and those are the things that we need to be doing in our community um i would say you know and in my letter last week um i did make the clear statement that there's been rumors out there um and there were rumors that we were potentially uh or not us in particular but that schools in suffolk county or on long island we're looking to close uh between thanksgiving and um christmas or i think or you know the holiday break or even even into the into january i can emphatically say that that's not the truth that there has been no coordinated effort to do this there are a couple of schools that have made decisions like that however those are um i have conversations um even with the governor's office about this um and are
027fully supportive um really believe that the best thing we can do is keep our schools open i believe that 100 percent i believe that if our faculty and our staff um and our kids continue to do what we're doing and that is tho those three three things that we've talked about we can certainly um keep kids safe in school and i think the benefit is that number one we keep kids safer in school than out of school where they could gather freely without those things we could provide a better education if we keep kids in school than than if we were fully remote we can also keep our economy going because things are are happening when people can get to work and be productive we can provide the necessary daycare for our essential workers to
028be able to do the things that they need to do when we see an uptick in cases um and so i i for all of those reasons i think that staying making sure that we do everything we can to keep our school open is um critical um and very very important so i would just emphasize those things and say that i'm very very proud of our staff of our community um for the support that we've had and i think that um it's not easy i'll be honest with you you know when when um you know when we get a case we do everything we can um ricardo is our um coveted coordinator um for the school district and he's he's a very busy man whether it be veterans day wednesday or whether it be a
029you know a sunday at one o'clock in the afternoon um the call comes in and and ricardo goes to work and i can't thank him enough for the efforts he puts into making sure um you know and and hey it's an annoyance you know we have to call teachers on on a sunday to find out what their interactions were with with a child on on a friday um and those are the things that we do but we're doing so to ensure the health and safety of everyone in our school district um so those those things um you know they really they make a difference um and and that's what keeping people in our community safe is all about so um like i said i'm proud of the job our teachers are doing i'm proud of
030the job our administrators are doing and you know more importantly probably i'm proud of the job the kids are doing um because without question from kindergarten through 12th grade kids are doing what they're being asked to do um when they're in school and staying safe now what we need to do is we need to see all the adults and and everybody else in in society do that in the um in the settings outside uh because the places we are seeing spread are the places where um and this is in you know direct communication with the health department it is in the parties um there was a halloween bump as we've seen and we know that that halloween bump um resulted in um many uh tremendous upticket cases in the county where we we went above
031three percent uh for upwards of a week um in suffolk county and that was a much higher percentage than anybody felt comfortable with we are seeing those numbers level off however there is fear that over the holiday break over thanksgiving um that we will see a thanksgiving bump um as you can see from the governor when the governor puts out um an edict that is basically to the effect that only 10 people should gather for thanksgiving dinner um that's a strong message um i don't i think that there's a lot of people that might not be very happy with that message but i think everyone to a person has to understand that that message is coming from a place where they're taking the health and safety very very seriously in new york state so i
032would please ask everyone if you have a positive case um whether it be in a family member please report that because that would necessitate a quarantine for your children that attend our schools um or if there's a case in our children please report that case we have you can call this regular hour comes in during those times or on our website there is uh an enter hours reporting link that you could go in report all the necessary information and um and then we take it from there and we do the rest um and make sure we follow up appropriately um other than that um i i just uh you know i i can't emphasize enough that that we um you know we are excited that you know we've been able to uh from the start
033of september provide the education we're providing we continue to move in a positive direction um we have been examining um you know i you know we talk about these look back periods um you know we've given dates for look back periods and one of those was monday where you know dennis myself reyna ricardo um sat down we started to talk about um you know clayton huey and um we we were discussing some of the options for for what we could potentially do um and and we're still having those conversations um although you know given given the spike out there um having having the you know the wednesday you know has been a help to us um and we are you know we are committed to our online learners um so we're we're working through some
034scenarios and some possibilities um to further increase some contact time um for our learners of clayton huey but otherwise um i can't i can report that while not easy again i'm just very proud of the work of our staff a couple other things to report um would be some of our you know um the um nli day national letter of intent day has come and it was a little bit different this year we did you know bring in kids one at a time with their families to do some signings and you may have seen those on social media but i want to offer some congratulations to some students who are committed to various colleges i would start with bella reed who will be attending monmouth university and playing women's lacrosse congratulations bella i think that's
035very very exciting um annabelle taylor is also one of our women's lacrosse players and she is committed to seton hill university so congratulations anna i know they're very lucky to have you um and then we also have erin cunningham um who will be attending fredonia and playing softball so congratulations to you erin and we have um lola kaczynski who will be playing women's soccer um at adelphi so very proud of these athletes for assigning their national letters of intent um and um i'm you know really really excited um oh and we also have um jordan titus um who also signed his national level of intent so congratulations to all of our uh for wrestling that is and congratulations to all of our our athletes um on an exciting time for them um trying to think
036what else i might have oh um i was overwhelmed um the our committees have been um and i know um just to give myself a break from talking over to ricardo maybe to enter some of the things happening with our diversity equity inclusivity committee sure thank you um dr sarah uh we actually had two committee meetings last week the first one was technology committee and i don't want to go into dei the diversity equity and inclusivity committee before mentioning technology committee that met on tuesday of last week and when we get together as a technology committee we're looking at predominantly two things we're looking at the hardware and software inventory of the district and trying to ascertain whether or not the devices that we currently have in-house devices that we have loaned out to students
037and the software are truly meeting the needs of our teachers of our students in support of our educational program so we're looking at it district-wide one of the things that we looked at is not only looking at the software inventory but looking at whether or not there's any redundancies in in the software meaning are there any applications any software that individual teachers utilize or administrators utilize that may have overlap with other software that that we currently uh utilize or we currently have a subscription to so we're looking at that and the purpose for that is to try to see if we could possibly save any funds by and i'm sure that carrier is going to be very happy with this as we look at our complete inventory and if we can better utilize the resources
038in a different area so we put out a survey to the staff this week and the survey really just is questioning how teachers are utilizing the software that we have and what what are their current needs in their professional development what are their needs in terms of hardware and software to enhance their students educational experience so those are some of the things we're looking at so i thank all the members of our technology committee i really appreciate your time and energy the next committee that i wanted to speak to is the um committee that dr masara just mentioned which is the district this year is the diversity equity and inclusion committee and this past thursday we had our second meeting and i think that it was a fabulous meeting especially considering the fact that this
039was the first meeting that we had six students participate in the meeting so we have six committee members that are new to the committee and there were six of them because that came about in our first meeting from the committee members was that we really wanted or they really wanted and i really wanted more student voice in the conversation so i reached out to quite a few students i have to thank uh miss dench who um volunteer who spoke too and i was about to say volunteered i attracted that on danielle but um so we had on danielle's children we have a couple other children as well all high school students and i know that initially if you guys are listening to this i know initially you might have been a little reluctant to participate
040and i'm sure in future meetings you will but i understand that it was the first meeting and we were talking about a lot of really intense topics but it's a great committee we're looking at the uh at sort of the landscape of our of our learning community and how do we enhance diversity within our community and when i what i mean by that is diversity in every aspect of our learning environment so whether it's in the classroom whether it's in extra curricular activities how do we speak about diversity and its racial diversity it's it's uh socioeconomic diversity it's um religious diversity it's um gender identification how do we begin that conversation with our students with our colleagues and with the larger community to build awareness to it and to um talk about some of the
041implicit biases that may exist and may be embedded within our system that we may not be aware of that we need to bring to light address and and modify and correct moving forward so it is a like i mentioned a moment ago it is a great committee we're looking at uh how do we utilize our resources to build about equitable conditions for all students and equitable is not equal equitable in our perspective is looking at providing students what they need to ensure success and ensure that they have the best opportunities to rise to their uh greatest potential the other things that we're looking at is uh no place for hate designation that is a designation that is endorsed by the anti-defamation league and it is uh given to schools that have demonstrated that they understand
042the dei and i'm going to use that acronym di uh movement and that they have done activities concerted activities to address uh dii initiatives throughout the entire district that has student representatives teachers uh representatives on the committee as well as parents administrators and community members so we're looking at that i introduce that to the committee this thursday i'm going to continue that conversation in our next meeting which is i believe december 2nd or december 3rd uh when we get back from the thanksgiving break and a couple of other things that we're doing as well we looked at strategic plans from other districts because i wanted the committee to have an idea of how other districts are utilizing their resources and their internal capacity and even external capacities to address the dei movements and initiatives within
043their district we also are we planned the professional development for our security personnel which i think really went well we looked at implicit uh biases implicit biases meaning unconscious things that we may do that are based on our background based on our life experiences that we bring to uh the way we respond to certain situations so we're looking at that as well and i have to tell you we all have implicit biases we just need to be aware of them and sort of suspend my actions prior to addressing a situation and dr masara and i attended a great webinar this week regarding how to build about equity board of education policies so we are looking at that work and we are going to bring that to the committee as well at our next meeting and
044hopefully uh bring about conversation regarding that the last thing i wanted to mention is that as a committee it is sort of like a book club as well we are looking at stamped which is racism anti-racism and you by jason reynolds and ibram hindi so every meeting i am asking the committee members to read a section and we are having a really vibrant conversation around the text and his implications on racism and historical racism that's what the text really looks at and the its implication to society as a as a whole now and how it is related to education as we approach it as educators as parents as students and as community members so i'm really excited to continue the work like i said we have a very uh diverse and um great committee from
045different um perspectives and different stakeholders so that's what we're doing with the dei committee yeah thanks ricardo and and um yeah that that that book is a great book and you know you really get a historical perspective for how you know deep seated um and and far back um those those um biases go so um i think it's a pretty powerful book and and the thing that i love about it just having those kids on there i think it's just really great to have uh we had six kids in that last meeting and it was it was really um that's that's wonderful to see um sorry just a quick question for ricardo with the technology yes how are we looking right now ricardo with uh you know with everyone having computers you know from home
046and we're in good shape right now and are you seeing one of the follow-ups said are we seeing an uptick on repairs maybe build no fee is he are we able to keep up on those repairs right now how are we looking we we are we we are good in terms of the parents and students that have reached out to the district that need a device we have and i think the community on the board is aware of this we've had quite a few distribution days and initially we did have some concern because we did at one point went out of devices so i i have to really thank dr masala for reaching out to the company that provided us devices that donated the vitus devices to us early into the summer they donated 199
047devices that we distributed completely and record the individual mr donovan and sort of explain the situation we're in in terms of not having enough devices for all of the needs of our parents needed another 75 and that's really what we needed to sort of get us over the hump i also want to thank the board for um allowing us to purchase the 450 chromebook devices out of reserves that we're still waiting to be delivered so that's what we are with technology um tom would you expect those ricardo do we expect them in soon i i hope i mean when we originally ordered them tom they gave us a 90 minute i mean 90 90 day delivery time and that's what they had to do so we're hoping and which would have taken us to the
048end of january when we originally ordered them we're hoping that they're going to come in sooner but as you as you can imagine as a community can imagine everything it is in the same situation in terms of ordering computers ordering devices we were all hit with the same situation in terms of providing our students and our community with a device to access a distance learning platform education platform so we're hoping time that they will come in prior to the estimated date that they gave us which was the 90 day the end of january delivery time but we don't know we're hoping that they will come in any day i'm still looking and i'm hoping that bill or someone would call me say ricardo the chromebooks came and we could start processing them and determine how
049best we should utilize them within the district all right thank you you're welcome okay you know um so just just to continue on at that um we we also had several other one two another six or five or six students um that were recently also tweeted out um sarah cearness um will be um atten signed her letter national letter of intent for albright university to play women's lacrosse so congratulations sarah um hayley hermsdoff will be attending franklin pierce university again for for women's lacrosse it seems that we have um quite a few uh young ladies that that are finding a um a home in athletics and lacrosse in their college uh careers isabella romandi will be attending georgian court university and she will be playing lacrosse there as well kayla mitchell will be attending millersville
050um and she will also be playing lacrosse congratulations to all of our female lacrosse athletes that um are are going to be playing in college i think that's wonderful uh jordan titus um i i don't think i mentioned it it actually is west virginia um because that he'll he'll be wrestling at and that's just um really so exciting for him he's had such an extraordinary high school career um and and we know that um you know he came back that the lab matches doesn't allow him to pick more words because he certainly would have if he was permitted to wrestle more so um and we also have aaron cunningham who will be attending fredonia and congratulations to you erin um just really great to see all these kids doing what they're most passionate about um
051and and doing so in college as well um the one other thing we have on the agenda we've got one more this is turning into a pretty lengthy report um but um you know one of the things that we talked about uh you know was bringing back the data and talking more about the data i'm just plugging in my computer before it dies here excuse me um and um and and you know about oh i went a couple of weeks ago i spoke to um john hildebrand in newsday um and one of the conversations we had was about um the ap reporting and and you know when john and i spoke you know they're only a this year uh or last year i should say opened up a portal for reporting that that had not
052previously been opened and only a few schools really took advantage and put their ap data in and we were a school that did not so john wanted to know why um and i spoke to him and and he got kind of half the story um and half the story was that you know we did get our data in um for the current year it was you know last year when it was brand new and we were kind of caught up in some stuff that we did not get that data in and other schools didn't as well so i thought you know since since it was reported that we hadn't gotten that in it might be appropriate for us to go and take a look and and actually put that data out there because the one
053thing john said from me was um he captured the quote that dr masaya said he's very proud of his ap results and that we will be getting the data in um so i you know i i think it's appropriate for our community to know why i think we're proud of our results and a lot of that has to do with you know basically this idea of creating endless opportunities for kids that when we look back in time and we look at the number of kids that that are taking tests the number of kids that are taking were taking uh ap tests right written back 10 years ago eight years ago to today i think you see a dramatic difference um and what that means is that there's a clear indication that kids are seeking more
054rigorous uh coursework and we so we're writing more tests but not only that we have maintained a level of mastery so if you if you double the number of tests that that you write in in ap you you could probably just achieve the same well so i'm going to ask and if you could if you could uh let reina share her screen um she has a presence brian can i just interrupt you for one second can uh bill um on mute george before he gets there no no i didn't i didn't text him that but i i guess he didn't you good george yep uh so just kidding george you know that's all right i'll mute back up so i did i did um i you know reina and i spoke and reina put together
055a nice presentation i don't want to steal your thundering because i started to kind of step on your toes a little bit but um but i wanted reina to uh to share um you know why i would tell john hildebrand that we were proud of um of our ap results so uh if you could let reina have the um co-host and and we'll um and we'll we'll talk a little bit about um you know next month in december we'll do a little bit of a bigger data presentation for the board uh but i think that this is a this is a good um a good little tease right here on on ap results all right good evening everyone thank you dr masara um there's nothing like a cold november night to have a nice little
056chat about uh some data and um can everyone see my screen everyone's good nope no no we just see you yeah share screen share come on all right i think it's going to work now how about that yep yep yep let's get rid of that okay perfect so um you know the world of data um in in my world as one of my roles as a data coordinator um it can be very overwhelming you know at this point every year they're collecting more and more data as dr masara said you know ap data was not something historically collected um and we collect demographic data from students assessment data report card data attendance data teacher data tenure data you know teacher evaluation data that that list has grown exponentially even over the last five years um
057and in some cases the term data especially when you connect it to assessment has become like a unfortunate term or a feared term or an ugly term um so i think it's really important um and that whole that whole sense of data is numbers and overwhelming and if i'm not a numbers person it doesn't um involve me um is something that we've really um kind of forced through in the education world we've gotten to a point where it's data informed not data accused or um we're gonna you know it's going to be um you know we had we we veered down somewhat of a troubling difficult path with appr but i feel like we've come back from that um and gotten back to a place where data tells us a lot about our progress it
058tells us a lot about our growth uh it tells us a story of where we've been um and where people get overwhelmed is where there's too much so as as dr sarah mentioned like this is a a little bit about ap and it's even in the ap world it's a it's a slice of the ap data that we actually can have our hands on um so it's it's overview data and it's historical data and so with historical data what we really want to do is is look at trends so here's the trend for um senator rich's and as dr masaya mentioned it is if you look at our trend um and this is this information actually comes from the college board report directly um and in the future the um college board report gets in
059so you know a little bit about the flow of data gets imported into e-school the e-school data gets imported um into boces level zero and then that follows a chain up to um sirs which is the state level of data so there's a lot of mechanics in that um and that's why um part of the reason why the state has a window of making things not mandatory when they first collect say teacher tenure data systems weren't set up for that so there's a trial window to make sure that your management systems can handle the data flow so here's a snapshot of our advanced placement data and and i think if you just take a look at you know the years are going across the top we have total ap students the number of exams ap
060students with scores of three or above and the percentage of uh total ap students with three or above um and one of the most important points it's so easy to get like fixated on the numbers uh the numbers tell a story it's so important to remember that behind these numbers they are kids there are teachers there are families there are hours of professional development and i could go on and on and on um of staying up late to complete assignments of cramming for the ap test organizing the ap test so um you know here our story is really one of growth and progress um and the numbers do speak for themselves you know and if you take a moment just to look at it um our growth really boils down to one overarching concept and
061i want to emphasize this i want to try not to gloss over it it is a direct result of the commitment of our students our families the entire school community in not just willing to take challenges but to face challenges head on and to create opportunities for future success of students and that really is you know the bottom line and it's it's not it's a simple statement but it's certainly not a simple endeavor and um i am certainly proud of where we've come um and i also know that in looking at these numbers and and knowing you know what students need to prepare for in college that there is what we can do moving forward is just continue is continue this growth now and here are kind of the highlights uh of the previous chart
062um you know as i said it emphasizes our program growth through the outcomes and you know over the years we gradually increase offerings more variety of offerings so students who may have not had an opportunity to take a course in their particular area of interest and because we really started a more inclusive process you know when we talk about diversity equity inclusivity this whole element of upper level coursework whether it's college concurrent ap ib that inclusivity piece has in education has not always been the culture and it really is a culture and it's not about cinema riches it's not even about long island and new york it is a an educational culture thing where if we have the right supports in place um everyone is capable of higher level work and when you start to
063open the doors and you start taking little gatekeeping elements away you realize what we've realized here in center riches the first part and i'm and then i'm not going to make this sound easy the first part is changing the mindset engaging in a philosophical conversation and getting people to a place and this is students teachers administrators parents where we know that kids are capable of this higher level work and first we're going to raise the expectation and then we're going to see results um and our results again we've raised the expectation our numbers in terms of participation have more than doubled and our student outcomes although you know we could always say this is an area that needs improvement continues to remain constant or consistent but our numbers of three and above you know are
064are increasing with our increasing numbers of participation and when even when i hear myself say it it sounds like it it just happens i mean this is you know work of a teacher reworking curriculum to make sure that if there are students who may have not been um you know able to obtain a three at the beginning of the year that they're able to obtain a three or higher you know towards the end and some of that's you know really looking at all of our classes all of our students um you know in these classes as individual learners that may need individual supports to to achieve proficiency um so and we know um from our counselors and from our um students who are going to college that you know engaging in this type of challenging
065coursework has a tremendous impact on college and career prep it has an impact on college acceptance because we hear more and more um from colleges and universities like they're looking at the transcript and they're looking at the numbers but they are looking at what kids are taking um and of course you know the opportunities that students have to receive college credit you obtain a three or higher in a series of courses you can enter freshman year second semester or i know you know students that have entered as you know full sophomore and that has a major impact on on students not just college life but life and life beyond college gives them flexibilities that they wouldn't necessarily um have had um and could also have you know significant financial impact um so you know our
066next steps really are um going to you know hopefully continue we're going to continue this trend but now look at like you know the typical how do we get that two to the three the three to the four the four to five and so forth um similar to what we've done you know in you know with regents exams and trying to move um the needle from passing to mastery because we know those mastery numbers mastery learning is the true indication of college and career readiness so this is just a just a visual of the previous chart just so you can see um what it looks like broken up by students number of exams um and number of three and above um you know obviously this year we just have you know this is what we're
067the 2021 school year is what we're anticipating um for uh the may exams and you know i you know as an assistant principal i think one of the most you know influential uh parts of my career when i was an assistant principal and working um you know more directly with students and scheduling and with the counselors you know it's the conversations that the counselors the teachers um are having with kids and parents and really trying to be supportive and encouraging um to some to give the kids the confidence that they can take on these challenges and be successful um and i think that we do that really really well in cinema riches you know i think that we have the opportunity to give individualized attention and we've seen it time and time again that our
068teachers are the ones who know what's out there know what they have for kids um and they are willing to go the extra mile um to get to you know to basically provide the best opportunities for student success um and you know it does start you know a lot of our teachers do start with looking at you know looking at data looking at where we've been looking at where we can go um so i'd be remiss in my um you know my ela background to not uh conclude with a with a quote um because in in my experience the numbers in our lives the numbers in our school system um really do help push us forward and they really do generate ideas um and i'll end with you know we do have a a little
069data subcommittee as part of our curriculum committee and you know moving forward i think um the more people we have in these conversations to look at data to see graduation data regents data um other data trends um in our world you know you know different sets of eyes see different things and that's where ideas are born um that's where great ideas come from so um i'd like to thank you for the time and uh if you want to join one of our data conversations please feel free to reach out to me i have a question sure um thank you for the presentation i think one of the um i mean it does uh show up a big picture of uh where we where we were and where we're going but i think one of the
070things that would be really nice to highlight would be um maybe recognizing some of the kids that do do the mastery like some districts do recognize their ap scholars i know um we do that for our sports but maybe that might be something that we should consider in our district if we're supposed if we're trying to get to that next level as well i know it's not just about the scores but i think that that might be something um you know something uh to consider incorporating into our programming as well for to increase awareness and um i guess yeah absolutely i think that you know things like that those recognitions um other kids will see that and that has an impact you know on the greater school community it's a motivating factor you know they
071see um you know that if the students being recognized um you know for their achievements that could potentially motivate others you know i think that's a great idea thank you rayna i just want to thank everybody um looking at these numbers when i was in high school in sun of riches and that's a little couple years ago but there were literally five kids in my ap bio class and we didn't have these options to to see the administration and the staff kind of balancing raising the expectations of our students but also giving them the confidence to try you know it's not the kids now are smarter we weren't as smart as them it's that it's it's expected that our kids are going to try all kids but that our teachers and our staff are giving
072them the confidence to to try you know and and really just for me it's so exciting to see all the different options that the kids have it's not just math and science you know those are great um or one english that the school has just so many options for kids and you know you might not be you might not want to take ap calc and you know some of us struggle through it but there are other options that you can you know try and push yourself so i really for me it's a huge thank you to everybody who's been working so hard for so many years to grow our programs it's really truly incredible where we are coming from where we've been it really is just very exciting for me to see that you know
073and i think it you know like i mentioned the little conversations thank you robin you know that you know that i've had along the way like you know you really just have to like listen to kids and people and watch kids like and sometimes it's an observation in the library or i'm in a classroom and i'm watching a kid interact and like you know as an educator you just have the sense like wow that kid could really flourish in this environment as well and so it comes and it's again it's small pieces all put together it's a teacher it's a counselor it's an administrator a librarian a parent you know or you know even kids recognizing each other you know i i started to realize like i saw a presentation years ago at a like
074maybe my first presentation at a national honor society um maybe it was science and i'm thinking about you know that these kids had to go outside of school for some opportunities and that we have capacity to do some of those opportunities in school um so i think the history piece is going to keep us grounded for the years to come um so it's so important to know your roots to know the history and the history is going to show pitfalls too we're going to learn from that you know um our kids learn that's how our kids learn our kids learn from that um so i'm super proud and i know we've got much more to accomplish and um that's why we're going to keep having these conversations and it's it's not going to just be
075about ap it's going to be about regents exams and um you know other other data points that are not necessarily just numbers yeah so this is can we put that on our website maybe like what the link is okay will we be able to put that on the website with the links for the curriculum committee maybe even broken down i know you had done it for me um as far as like the like the different subcommittee objects yeah took a subcommittee and then reported back that would be phenomenal yeah so that would be good okay thanks thank you thank you everyone okay click this stop share the arena and the one thing um yeah and the one thing that i you know i mean i i love that the last slide because the last slide
076with the you know um well i love your quote the last slide but the one before that with the bar graphs um rayna knows that you know i love i love to see the trend lines you know on the trend lines i didn't put the trend they show more students taking um you know taking ap classes um over 10 years and all three trend lines are up um more tests being written and more kids scoring at level three or higher so you know when you see all three of those things moving in the right direction um everything's moving in the right direction so you know what robin said until reina said and to what danielle said you know um good stuff and and it really is to me very exciting um you know the last
077thing and again going on and on here um uh you know we also um have a legislative committee um that will be that you know it was you know lightly attended let's say robin danielle thanks for coming um you know but but we are uh you know we are you know trying to be you know active with that um you know we do have you know i did send letters to you know although actually some of the races were um we're not even called yet locally um but it does look like there is a bit of a transition in the leadership um for the long island delegation to the assembly and senate in new york state um and and that's you know so it shifted a little bit um and and it has skewed the
078balance a little bit which quite honestly weakens our position in albany for advocacy um is what i would say um so you know it will be an odd year um you know depending upon how things ultimately shake out with when the races are all declared um we will be reaching out we will be making sure that we continue to nurture those um you know relationships um and and work with our state um legislators to you know advocate for um our our fair share um obviously one of the biggest things we're advocating for is um if in fact there is any loss of state aid uh that there is a federal backfill of that um we do know that the state is in a better position they were you know talking about a you know 16
079billion dollar shortfall that is now um about 8 billion um so still losing money but hopefully um you know that the projected losses have moved in the right direction um and would result in you know if anything less of a cut and hopefully no cut there is um you know an enormous rainy day fund in the state that could cover this um so there's some advocacy in in the legislature to for the governor to you know put some pressure on the governor to use that as well um but a lot of this is to be determined and we will see i do have a meeting um with the um i'm on the commissioner's advisory council for the state um and i have been selected to ask the first question to the commissioner um friday morning
080um and that will be a question about what what mandate relief new york state education department is proposing to the um to the legislature so um you know i'll be able to report back on on how the commissioner responds to that um as you know the the new commissioner is our um former chancellor uh betty rosa um and um so i'll be able to um they actually suspended the commissioners advisory council um last march was the last time we met um and this is the first time we're actually meeting with the commissioner as a council um so it'd be interesting to to get her perspective on what's happening throughout the state on friday um i think that's it for the brief superintendent's report tonight george listen there was a lot of good stuff there nothing
081that we wanted to skip so thank you everybody you guys for presenting we do appreciate it that does bring us to questions and comments regarding tonight's agenda only so if anybody has a question regarding just the agenda of course there'll be a time at the end for any public comments but now is the time to ask questions or make comments regarding tonight's agenda so use that hand raising function in the participants i think you got to click there give it a minute bill good thing we good you think bill uh no hands raised so okay i must have lulled them to sleep yeah the uh board of ed is asked to accept the minutes of the following meetings as prepared by the district clerk minutes of the regular meeting of the board of ed on
082october 28 2020 motion motion second second all in favor yes yes carries unanimously i think that's the shortest list of minutes that we've had in quite some time financial reports be resolved at the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools accepts the following financial reports budget transfer general exhibit 2a in exhibit 2a1 general claims audit report from october 2020 exhibit 2b treasury reports october 2020 exhibit 2c motion motion second second yes motion carries unanimously um consent agenda vote emotion to approve the consent agenda asterix agenda items or consent agenda items consent agenda items are approved by a single vote unless they are removed from being consent item prior to the vote motion motion second second fall in favor yes yes motion carries unanimously that brings us down to thank you you're
083welcome janine that brings us holy mackerel page 11. oh that brings us to the i guess the general public session where members of the public could desire to address a question the board on any topic related to board work are welcome to do so speakers are requested to limit um or to appoint a spokesperson so if anybody has any questions about anything now is the time george can we just thank jeremy thought for his donation oh yeah yeah thank you robin i i don't know where he gets all this stuff our great benefits beneficiaries i guess of it so thank you very much for that jeremy thank you robin all right we do have a hand up okay go ahead bill okay it's lisa marin hi everybody thank you so much for your hard work
084i know uh some uh you know hopefully not two tough days ahead i just was i noticed on the agenda that um dr flynn trace is no longer going to be the ib coordinator so i was wondering who's going to be the new coordinator if you knew yeah um rainey you want to jump in or where you know where basically you know that was something that just came about um and we are um you know we are basically right now picking that up as an administrative team um but we um you know it kind of we just didn't have time to get on to this this agenda but we are um so we really can't speak to the personnel piece of it but um we are actively um you know identifying a way so that
085we don't we will not skip a beat for the kids um and right now miss magonia mr thode um and other members that are very active in uh administration of ib are you know kind of picking up that piece right now if that answers it adequately rayna what do you think yeah um you know but solution is uh coming shortly yeah we just want to reassure everybody that nothing will drop there um we have 17 kids um right now that are ib um dp candidates um and certainly we're gonna you know and others that the program well about seven kids we certainly do not want to see them yeah and and um anytime you have a head of school slash principal transition which we have as well um or an ib coordinated transition ib also
086steps in and helps and and kind of gives you a lot of extra attention to make sure that um you have the support that you need as you transition in these important roles so we're in contact they're joining us for weekly uh meetings at this point so the head of ib schools north america is actually meeting with our team on a regular basis and we'll continue to meet with our team um you know both administrative and teachers as as much as needed thank you thank you bill yes sorry we have another one christine buff okay sorry guys i couldn't unmute myself i apologize that's okay i was like where is that unmute button um question two actually what's the status of um some of the high school clubs um specifically the robotics club as well
087as potential um the ja the jazz band clubs that they used to have i mean what's the status of those two items so in in the budget process were a couple of uh and off the top i can't remember exactly which clubs we have running and which clubs we don't um in the budget process there was some reduction to clubs due to some of the cuts that we had to make um however um you know so we had to make some decisions about which clubs could run virtually you know to keep kids engaged and which clubs could not um and in particular i don't know where we're at with um either one of those characters you know offhand i know we have a list of the charters but i'm not sure exactly where we're at
088are either of those running no we're not um robotics is not running and neither is jazz band we did implement instrumental music as well as um the chorus because those are tied to the nisma performances and scamia performances um but due to the budget cuts like you said and being able to run certain things virtually we have had to make decisions on which clubs we can run that to stay within the approved budget and unfortunately at this time those two jazz band and robotics will not be running okay i i do understand um i just i am so incredibly sad about the robotics piece of this because um as mr nophy will attest um you know a bunch of kids who started off super strong in elementary school um kind of got a little uh
089neglected in middle school and it sort of fizzled and you know the ninth grade moment is now here from my one son and a bunch of other kids and and all and never mind them i mean the seniors who who didn't get to go at the end of last year and compete you know it's my understanding that first is actually doing some sort of virtual um potentially doing a virtual um competition and i don't know it just it completely breaks my heart that that those kids are not going to have the opportunity to compete and i i don't know i mean i just feel like there's got to be a way to you know fundraise the money to get their fees in or whatever i don't even know but i just that yeah we are
090looking at it because um there are some programs you'll see like the musical we're trying to see how we can get the musical running in the spring um as an outdoor type of a program uh they can rehearse safely and everything like that and robotics has come up in a similar question is how can we do it they do have those robots they built last year and weren't able to compete with um so we're looking at the athlete the um curricula co-curricular budgets as a whole as a district-wide k-12 there are less clubs running in the elementary building than were anticipated due to the virtual um reasonings so you know mr richie was gracious enough to transfer some of his funds over to the high school to allow for the musical to occur so we're
091continuing to monitor those things and see what's going on as school progresses to see if we can be able to implement anything further going forward um and rightfully knowing that those kids from robotics last year were not able to go to competition and do have the robots ready to go um and it might not be as much um as far as a stipend for a supervisor or maybe the fees might be a little less because they did uh waive them and refund some of them for them to carry into the new year so we're continuing to look at it and like i said we're looking at it as a k-12 not just a high school co-curricular but it's k-12 co-curricular and all the principles are working together to see how we can get the best
092offerings out for all kids okay thank you very much that that gives me a glimmer of hope um i appreciate that i mean honestly it's really i just i remember being in that board meeting when i believed dr masara had to let the kids know that they couldn't go and i get it you know we're in a pandemic i understand that but you know some of these you know these some of these children could just even be gathering virtually and coming up with concepts and ideas and just you know doing things that are smart and safe and just i don't know just good versus you know hanging out on youtube or just doing you know other things that you know giving them a goal when they have no goals right now except just school work
093i think it's it's a little um difficult but i appreciate um all you're saying so i hope that something can get worked out in the future thank you you're welcome and yeah christine i share that heartbreak with you i saw those kids last year i watched them working on that robot and and the passion that went into it and and they were just you know i i we're with you uh you know where we you know what what's happening now is is you know we're coming up with creative ways to do things we weren't sure we'd be able to um in september um and so that's one of those things that like you know ms lachlan said we will we will look at creative ways to try to bring back some things that that right
094now okay thank you so much i appreciate that thank you nope uh no more hands nothing i can say okay i'll go through the list of announcements bill just let me know if a hand pops up okay yes sir thank you um so the next board of ed meeting is wednesday december 16 2020 location to be determined we had our last month but we needed to shift to uh fully remote so we'll certainly let you know that exec youtube session will be at six o'clock and then the action meeting will be approximately seven and we do try to get out here as quickly as possible at seven o'clock for the public we don't like to keep you waiting so um thank you very much for everybody who came bill d do you see anything else
095no hands we're clear all right thank you bill and thank you to the community who logged on tonight and uh yes we appreciate it and we do appreciate all the questions and all the comments and um you know as dr mercer said we do feel the same heartbreak that you do for the students so um always re-examining and working to give them as many of the opportunities back as we can so thank you very much for coming tonight uh motion to move into executive session for to discuss other matters the disclosure of which would result in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy motion motion second second all in favor yes yes motion carries unanimously and ron will just use the same as before correct okay good night thank you everyone thank you good night thank
096you thanks janine thanks bill george good night everybody