001we will call the meeting to order please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance first item on the agenda is approval of the agenda for this evening is there a motion to approve the agenda thank you sherry in a second from rebecca any discussion all those in favor please indicate i i no one's opposed or abstaining next item on the agenda item 1.04 public comment i do understand we have someone for a public comment mr white mr white i'll raise my hand when you're about halfway through so give me one second to get my clock going here okay so um i'm going to i'm going to talk about a grading policy that exists both at the high school and at middle schools okay i sent around this petition that i'd like to
002circulate among the board members um i there's something i understand here okay there is a grading policy that's existing where if a student turns in something late okay this is not all teachers but certain teachers at the high school and in the middle school they turn something in late sometimes it can be even just like a minute late that student doesn't get like an f doesn't get a 64 f grade okay they get a zero or a 50 grade okay and my question is what are those extra 64 points about i mean can't you just give an f make the point that you know you give an f okay so you turn something late you drive home the point clearly that they that they you know they they failed in terms of the expectation of
003the air of turning something in late shouldn't it shouldn't f be good enough for that i mean i don't understand i don't understand how come students have to be penalized you know to be basically have their gpa trashed and that's happened i had both my daughters have had this experience where they got one when my older daughter turned in something like five minutes late uh it was assignment she got a zero for it and then that proceeded procedure dragged down her average by 10 points for the entire marking period and she had to suffer through the rest of the marking period just trying to make up clawing her way back to something respectable for the for that marking period i just don't it just seems disproportionate i mean i understand punishing kids for turning things
004late i just don't understand how this is a best practice the best grading practice and and that's something i've asked for i last january i sent an email to dr teice and i sent an email to um dr conflint about now please provide me with at least one journal article from this century that shows that giving students zero percent grades or 50 grades on you know for late assignments uh this is completed work mind you this isn't like this isn't like not done work this is completed work give me one journal article that shows that this is the best practice for education in this century okay or even the converse show me send me a give me an article give me a journal article or even an editorial saying that the opposite of this is
005is also you know the the idea that no we need to keep this in our arsenal of tools and our toolbox of of things now what what this is showing here okay and this was a petition that was circulated by my daughter my older daughter two years ago or three years ago where it was that um you know students find us to be humiliating and degrading okay they find this to be humiliating and grading policy and you know i this is the first page okay as you see there's a number up there there's more to come okay in fact you know this the board has acted fast on things when things are degrading and humiliating students such as the um such as the postings on the fm truce website okay the instagram page fm truce
006was instagram page about instances of racism and xenophobia and discrimination because of religion and so forth okay that didn't require like teacher input for you guys to act and form a d uh ei committee and start addressing these matters head on okay it's because students found it to be degrading and humiliating that you guys uh that you guys took action and i commend you for that okay my question is if there's something you know right now there's 13 students okay i can assure you that the hundred posts that when this is over that's going to dwarf the hundred posts from the the number of people who signed this petition is going to dwarf the number of people who posted anonymously on the fm truce web instagram page and with all those students hundreds of students
007saying that this is humiliating degrading i think it's time for the board of education to act on this and make just just ban the practice straight out straight up band of practice say make it floor 64 percent thank you very much is the uh it would be the floor grade for uh simon says turn in late that are completed thank you thank you very much there are two copies of the petition circulating one went this way and the other one that way so and we'll make sure board members who are not present are able to see that as well mr white thank you next on the agenda item 2.01 claims auditor report cathy i'd like to thank sarah my assistant with the technology tonight i appreciate it and i'm katie phillips i am your internal
008claims auditor for the district and in december it'll be um two years that i've worked for the pleasure of working for the fayetteville manly school district i also am the internal claims auditor for the east syracuse minoa school district so that um i'm here every wednesday and i'm at east syracuse manoa unless needed every other thursday so the process we provided you with some documents to just kind of recap last year the entire year and to kind of recap where we are to date through um august and how it's been it was a very different year of course because of covid there weren't a lot of people going anywhere it was a very quiet year as far as purchasing however you know business got done i would like to thank the leadership of the district
009i think they do a phenomenal job and everybody really does take the job seriously in the business office and throughout the organization people have been very cooperative if something was needed they hopped on it and we got it done you can see you know the variety we've had of findings and if you look at the the errors they're relatively small in nature fortunately i worked in public education for 34 years so i'm very familiar with business practices i'm familiar with the vendors and what what schools buy what the needs are you have excellent purchasing processes in place here and i just can't say enough about the staff i think they do a phenomenal job everybody really takes their job seriously and they do a good job so that makes my job easy and i'd be
010happy to answer any questions about auditing that anyone would have on the internal claims piece i don't have any questions katie but i would just like to thank you for your good job we appreciate it it's hard to believe it's almost two years first one was very strange but you're not at all concerned about for instance september where we had twice as many as other months no i think um in september you had twice as many but people were getting back into routines and everybody you have some new staff and i think the business office has stepped out and helped some of the new people there's a lot of hands and people involved in these processes from the purchasing on down to the receipt of the product and how that all comes together so you
011know i i expected that i think that's normal it would not have been normal if that wasn't the case just the learning curve thank you so much thank you so much okay thank you everyone have a great night thank you for coming we appreciate it next on the agenda item 2.02 district mental health services report director of counseling heidi greene hello everyone thank you for the opportunity to present today i stand before you as a representative voice of 25 amazing caring compassionate educators who support the emotional well-being of our students and families [Music] at fayetteville manliness high school and as you can see many of my wonderful colleagues are standing beside me this evening so tonight i want to spend some time defining our roles i just mentioned the three groups that comprise the student
012support services that take care of students emotional health education how we educate ourselves how we educate students and families staff making connections the importance of making connections responsive services sort of the day-to-day what we do to support students and their emotions and then some action items at the end that we continue to work work on so as i mentioned there are three groups of educators that focus on the emotional health and well-being of students we have 14 school counselors across our six buildings six school psychologists in each building and a district psychologist who resides in the high school and four family school liaisons in the high school middle school and shared across the elementary schools so what do those folks do how are they different and how are they the same well school counselors serve
013the entire population providing a broad range of services in the areas of academic achievement career development and social emotional needs they connect and communicate with those in the student circle including teachers parents administrators and at times outside support services the school psychologists serve students who have specific social emotional behavioral needs and or medical diagnoses which hold them back from learning they administer psychological testing develop ieps consult and collaborate with parents and school staff and help with learning strategies and finally the family school liaisons they provide intensive support to our children most in need they work directly with the whole family system sometimes at the students homes creating a positive supportive relationship between home and school they frequently connect families to outside agencies and other support each of these three roles has an important impact on
014the emotional health and well-being of our students there are some areas in which our services overlap and there are some distinctions between each role as well but regardless of our titles we work seamlessly together as a team both within our schools and district-wide regularly consulting with one another to support students and families and i would say on a daily basis we're consulting we're walking down the halls and whether you're in an elementary school where there's three members of this particular group or in the middle schools where the group grows a little bit or at the high school where we have a pretty healthy number we're always consulting and collaborating with one another the other thing i just wanted to mention we recently went through a training which i'll talk about a little bit later and
015the woman who was training us talked about sort of exchanging the word mental health for emotional health that we all have emotion and emotions sort of run on a spectrum and we all are dealing with emotional health all the time but when we talk about mental health it kind of furthers the stigma that people think about with um you know having a mental illness a mental problem i meant and so we've been working a little bit since our training last weekend sort of maybe interchanging those words a little bit more and and focusing on emotional health and really and and for the counselors the american school counselor association um our standards include social emotional learning not social mental learning so um that's something that we may be a little bit cognizant of as we move
016forward and as we move into the education part of of this presentation i wanted to mention that we partner with health and pe teachers to support mental health education at all levels particularly focusing on the mind-body connection educating ourselves we spend a lot of time learning about emotional health safety and wellness you can see on the slide workshops webinars courses conferences credentials agency visits we have people who have all different kinds of credentials that may not be directly related to being a school counselor psychologist or beyond the realm of of the what's required to be employed by a school district but have a lot of other licenses and so on that's supportive of our students on staff development days we will frequently travel to an agency off site to become well-versed in the services that
017they provide so places like cpap at st joe's helio health which talks about substance abuse among our among other things the q center supporting lgbtq students and families center syracuse which actually doesn't exist anymore unfortunately but we went to them when they were still open a few years ago and they focused on eating disorders uh booth house for homeless youth the mcmahon ryan center for sexually abused children so any opportunity that we get to travel as a group we go off-site and visit with agencies so that we feel more comfortable when we're referring students and families that we've been there that we've seen the facility that we know sort of what's going to happen when that they arrive because of course it can be very scary if you're sending a student or a family to
018an outside agency and they don't know what to expect so we spend a lot of time training and doing things outside the district at times to to better prepare ourselves for that so for purposes of this meeting any relevant professional development that that staff have participated in is far too long i did provide an updated board document this morning and i added a sampling of the professional development of our group and when i say that it's literally thousands of hours that are devoted to training and mental health we took a three-year study i asked my colleagues to provide the training that they've had in the last three years that are around emotional health and you'll see the list is two pages in your board doc and i'm not convinced that that's everything but it certainly
019gives you a smattering and you can see the titles of some of the various um presentations and so on that that we've participated in and just last week we brought in a trainer from the new york state office of mental health and it was actually sort of a funny story we got information one morning that they were offering six workshops on a particular program called creating suicide safety in schools training so i blasted it out to everybody and i said sign up quick there's six different options we can all go on different days so that our buildings are still covered but it would be really great if we could all have the same training well in fact they were all sold out instantly sold out so we didn't get in so i sent a an
020email to the agency new york state office of mental health and just said geez we got closed out these are virtual sessions can't you add one more can't you add a few more and they couldn't but then i said you know i started thinking about the fact that we had this big group and i said would you ever be willing to come to our district and do a group training just with our staff well that was the best thing that could have ever happened because as a group all 25 of us participated in three hours of virtual learning together and then on the staff development day last week we spent the afternoon together three hours with the trainer who came to campus and we were able to work directly as a group rather than in
021little individual components which you know we would have sort of gone on our own direction so this is a picture of what happened last tuesday afternoon and you can see we have counselors and family school liaisons and psychologists of all levels mixed together you know planning and preparing and trying to come up with a framework that is helpful accessible and really standardized plans for effective suicide prevention and response planning so in addition to educating ourselves to be best prepared to serve our students we also educate our students and this is where i go back to sort of combining our efforts with the health teachers and the pe teachers really across the district we are all focusing on the mind and the body and so you can see some of this is from actually the health
022teachers literacy and health standards and they came and presented a few years ago and talked about some of these topics and so when sometimes students think that they aren't getting information about mental health or they don't know about mental health and where is it covered i want to show everybody that it's alive and well in our schools at all levels so understanding how to obtain and maintain good mental health understanding mental disorders and mental health disorders and treatments decreasing the stigma that's certainly something that we focus on and enhancing health seeking efficacy so trying to teach students about self-care and self-advocacy and being able to help themselves as they get older and move forward become more independent and self-advocates developing self-awareness and self-management skills essential for mental health developing healthy relationships and developing skills to
023utilize personal and community resources and so these are some of the things that when we look at what the counselors do in classrooms and various levels and what the health teachers do and the physical education teachers do here's really a bulleted list of many of the topics that we cover sarah do i need to read this or can people who might be watching see this screen okay so i won't read the screen to you the trends and challenges our students face have certainly changed over the years we spend much more time talking about social media sexuality and gender issues stress and anxiety and self-harm than ever before from middle school on up with phones in their hands students have far more information at their fingertips than in the past but just like we don't want
024em webmd to substitute for a doctor's visit we don't want students to get their emotional support from potentially inaccurate web sources so in addition to educating ourselves and educating our students we also work on educating staff and parents those who also serve and work with our students on a daily basis and so again you can see many of the things that we've done over time offering a variety of programs for parents on topics related to mental health so i know some of you participated in some of our district-wide book read dr angel has come and done several presentations for staff and for parents last year during mental health awareness month we did some virtual events for k-12 parents on eating disorders more than sad which is a suicide prevention program following the more than sad
025for the parents we actually at the high school had all 1400 of our students participate in that workshop and over a two-day period in our physical education classes the presenter came and talked to students about suicide prevention how to talk to friends who they might be worried about how to self-advocate for themselves and ask for help if needed and then all staff participate in a mandatory mental health training at the beginning of every year they complete that before september 15th each year and then we also have people who specialize in certain areas have been trained in certain areas like for example our psychologists and some of our family school liaisons have been trained in what we call tcis and so just this year the first day of school the psychologist went and talked to the
026teaching assistants and taught teaching them how to de-escalate students and so on so sometimes we do turnkey training within the district if we have that expertise so students can't learn if they don't feel safe if we were looking if we were to look at non-graduates across the country what they have in common among other things is a lack of connection to school and for that reason we make sure at every level to engage and orient students to their school and being sure that they know who their counselor is and how to access that person you can see from the slide we do orientations at every level when they're coming into kindergarten when they're moving into middle school and certainly when they're moving into high school again counselor introductions are made at all different levels many
027of our schools have mentoring programs in place sometimes it's a student to student mentoring programs a program where our our high school students go down to many of the buildings and do some tutoring or some social skills building or some friendship mentoring kind of thing and then we also have some buildings that have adult-to-student mentoring programs where we take our students who might need some extra support and create that kind of a relationship and then i think as most of you are aware we've developed wellness days in all of our schools we started in high school maybe six or seven years ago and each building has since come on and done a wellness day and it really allows not only the students but the staff to kind of take a break from the rigors of
028the daily program and take some time together to laugh and have fun and and enjoy and the students always talk about how nice it is to see their teachers uh having fun with them and doing things that they might not otherwise be able to do in a normal school day so some additional ways that we make connections with our students our staff is very engaged with a lot of the activities in schools so from character ed to positivity project of course our therapy dog program throughout the district we have many dogs in training in addition to the ones that we already have here family school liaisons that are developing relationships with our families we have staff members in our group who advise clubs coach sports chaperone trips participate in events and all of this is
029really an effort to get to know kids at a deeper level in an another way than just in the classroom in our offices so getting out there and really participating in the life of our students and many of us just coincidentally i think in a lot of our buildings our little sunshine committees which sort of focuses on culture and climate of the buildings kind of tends to fall to the counselor sometimes and so we have done a lot of really great things across the district and you can see some of the some of the events that have taken place that um really stem from those of in our group who want to make people feel comfortable and safe and supported in the school setting and what would a presentation be without seeing our dogs we
030have all of the dogs that you see here are certified therapy dogs and they're working across the district they're employees we call them staff members and they get their pictures taken in the yearbook and we have one in the house tonight that we thought we would introduce to our board of education members so liz biondo is one of our new family school liaisons who started this fall and she has maisie and maisie was dressed up for halloween as a dalmatian and some of her spots still haven't come out yet so if you if you see um and just while she's walking maisie around i wanted to mention that we submitted a proposal to the new york state school counselors association annual conference which just happened last weekend at turning stone casino and liz and dana
031pierce went to turning stone and presented for two hour two different workshop sessions about how to develop a therapy pro therapy dog program from the ground up and the first day in particular they had a sold out crowd and you know who wouldn't want to come and hear the great work that um is happening in our district and maisie was on her best behavior that day getting to circulate throughout the room so i guess in addition to educating our students and ourselves and our staff and our parents we're also trying to educate others in the state to let them know about the wonderful programs that we have in place here and finally um and again this sort of reflects the the layout of the board report is responsive services so you know most students who
032walk in our office come in with non-emergency situations right they have they need a caring adult to kind of process their feelings i'm not prepared for my test i failed my test my boyfriend broke up with me my friend is mad at me i'm mad at my mom i'm anxious i'm afraid any any number of things that's impacting their ability to focus in school on that particular day our goal is short-term solution-based assistance this is what we do all the time and students generally feel better when they leave our office right our goal is to get them in not feeling so good we work with them we talk through what the difficulties are and we send them on their way when they feel ready to get back to school and return and return to class
033some scenarios are more serious so in that case we are sort of the first responders for students with emotional health concerns particularly in a crisis situation each building utilizes a team approach that i mentioned earlier we don't work in isolation when we have a student who is appearing to be in a more significant emotional state that needs some some support we'll assess the situation that's in front of us listen we consider the signs and symptoms that and risk faster factors that we are familiar with we give reassurance we share information we try to de-escalate the situation we encourage as i mentioned before strategies of self-care always communicating with parents and often making referrals to other providers as appropriate providing follow-up care safety plans and ongoing support but it's never really a one and done when
034they come to our office and if a counselor is meeting with a student and a student perhaps talks about suicide ideation or we get a referral from a friend that they're worried about a friend we always bring in a colleague so whether it's another counselor a family school liaison the school psychologist we have a risk assessment form and we go through that form with two different people to decide as a screening tool to decide if we feel that the student needs urgent not urgent care but immediate care when that is the situation we communicate with parents we often take students to a hospital setting if we feel that that's what's most needed sometimes the cyros assist with that transportation and we ride with the student and we support the family when they arrive and do
035intakes it's probably a family's most vulnerable and stressful and difficult situation and we do our best to sort of hold their hand through the process and then we follow up with them so we don't drop them off and then you know wait till they come back we are in communication often with the students therapists with the parents over the course of a weekend or a week or however long that might be when the student comes back to school we talk about follow-up care safety plans ongoing support sometimes when a student returns to school we'll meet with them on a daily basis every morning until they feel ready to get get through their day on their own in addition to sort of the one-on-one that we do with students both for what we see mostly on
036a daily basis as i mentioned which are really more just you know helping kids get through their day or a crisis situation we also have support groups that are offered throughout the district and some of that's on an as needed basis so it doesn't mean that all of these groups are happening in all of the buildings we we sort of go with what we have in front of us each year and and base our groups on that so you can see lots of the different types of support groups that are offered throughout the district and again those are typically facilitated by school counselors or psychologists or family school liaisons and sometimes they partner and we'll have two facilitators for a support group we work with our students to help them on self-care self-advocacy who can
037i talk to who can i turn to we want to make sure that they are turning to caring adults it's helpful you know they like to turn to their peers often but we want to make sure that they have support where they need it but at all levels we meet students where they are and we help them get to a place where they are ready to return to the classroom and learn so finally you know we can always we can always keep going so i think we have a lot of great services in place and support students throughout the school day throughout the months and years of the school year and even through the summer we don't drop kids off at the end of june and not see them again until september our family school
038liaisons are often visiting families throughout the summer to make sure that we don't have a two-month gap in support but these are some of the items that we continue to work on so i mentioned the training we did last week the creating suicide safety in schools we're creating there's a framework that exists and we did an assessment with five benchmarks that make up the this particular framework and we found the areas that we are strong in and excelling in and we found some areas that we need to systematize a little bit more and so those are the areas that we are working on and so that we can be confident that whether you're at mott road or wellwood or the high school that we are going to approach some of these situations in the same
039way so we're going to continue to work on that as we move forward we used to have a brochure called helping students grow which was an introduction to our counseling program in the district it kind of we felt like it ran its course a little bit it was just a little trifold that we would send home to new students and families but we've decided that it would be important maybe to highlight some of the supports that are available to students and families in our district counselors and psychologists and our social workers and family school liaisons are often sort of behind the scene people by nature right and those are the things that sometimes students and families may not be aware of some of the opportunities that they have and the support that they have within
040the building until they need it and so we're going to take that helping students grow brochure and sort of grow it and create some sort of a document um maybe a paper version maybe a web version and figure out a way to distribute that sort of district-wide and really in the community so people know what we have available last year during the pandemic we spent a lot of time putting documents together resources videos wellness information mind of mindfulness opportunities in schoology which is accessible to students and parents but we realized in going through our training last week that really in our on our website we don't have a lot of emotional support references and at a in a sort of emergency or urgent situation a parent may not think to go to schoology and right
041dig through to find the mental health resources so we are going to move our resources and create hopefully a wealth of information available right on our district website so that anybody that comes to the website can see the supports that are in place and available in our district and some you know outside resources too that they might be able to access over the years we've done introductory meetings with local therapists so it's really difficult it was it goes along the lines of what i mentioned before going to agencies and doing site visits it's really hard when you're about to refer a student to someone who to have a very sort of close intimate relationship with to not know who you're sending them to and many of the therapists that we have are often self-referrals or
042we've you know had a student or a family who has had a good experience but it's really helpful for us to have conversations with some of the folks that are going to be working with our students understand their philosophy their personality you know see what kind of a connection who they might be a good fit for and so there was a time where we would have these meetings with local therapists we'd bring them into various department meetings and we would spend 15 or 20 minutes with the therapist they were often always free the the therapists were always willing to come and meet with us and it was really a great opportunity and then over the years and with covet and so on we sort of stopped doing that but certainly that's something that we're going
043to reinstitute and now that we can do so many things virtually even though we prefer to be in person that's one of those things that we might be able to do very quickly and not take as much of the therapist's time but still have the opportunity to get to know some of our our local providers a little bit better and then we'll continue with parent education programs as always sometimes parent education programs aren't as well attended as we would hope i think and when you're talking about emotional health sometimes parents may read the topic and think well my student doesn't have that particular concern or difficulty right now and so that might that doesn't apply to me we're trying to advertise our programs more of it sort of it takes a village and you never
044know when your child's friend might need some support or signs and symptoms to look for in any one of the areas that we spoke about tonight so we'll continue to do parent education programs and perhaps that could be another thing that we put on our website is if we can get some recordings of some of those things that then when the time and place comes that a parent might need that resource it would be available to them right on the web and that's all i have [Applause] thank you very much heidi i know we're going to have well i'm sure we'll have some questions from the board but i do want to express our appreciation to you for putting together this report and to all of our counselors and school psychologists and other mental health
045professionals for the work that you do in our buildings every day we appreciate what you do for our students thank you very much thank you um does anyone want to start with some questions i've got some mine isn't quite a question but i want to echo marissa and give my thanks to you um but i also very much appreciate that your last slide there was action steps that you realize that you know like like everybody we can't rest on what we're doing and we can always improve and so those are some fantastic action steps that you it looks like you're ready to take thank you for doing that part great thank you heidi i too would like to thank you so much the report you submitted for us to read was exhaustive and now you've
046added more i can't wait to read through all of the professional development but um i know many of your team mates well and we are very fortunate in this district to have not just talented but empathic people um people with deep hearts and i'm very grateful and i think i hope many of our families at home are watching tonight thank you heidi thank you so much for putting this report together and the board docs report you submitted is incredibly thorough and i have to say i'm pretty blown away by the breadth of services but also programming that's in the schools to build a culture that's inclusive and safe and supportive and so for that i just want to thank all the counselors many of who are here tonight for all the hard work that you've
047been doing especially especially during the pandemic and i also just wanted to ask another thought i had with respect to the resources page which is a wonderful idea is just maybe this is more for the board level or the district level but to somehow showcase some of the work maybe that are not resources but just so families are aware of what's going on in the schools and we could take a lot of what's in your report and provide that content i'm just thinking that my community relations had on but i just think there's so much here that families may not know because their kids not may not be coming home and sharing that information and i also was just curious what particular challenges and i know this is a probably a broad question but what
048particular challenges we're seeing for students this year kind of post shutdown and hybrid year and how we're supporting our students with respect to those issues sure and i can answer a little and any of my colleagues from the other levels can answer as well but i was talking to a colleague today and we were saying probably 75 to 80 percent of what we've been doing every day since the start of the school year is supporting students on kind of that daily getting through the day the anxiousness of being back the worry of five days a week in school getting through the homework again you know they had that wednesday off at the high school last year and getting through five days after 18 months off can be exhausting and students are feeling that a little
049bit [Music] certainly the there are some gaps probably and the work that they had last year and what they're catching up with now so i think you know being comfortable being uncomfortable i think a little bit and making sure that we provide students and encourage them to seek their teachers after school and you know use the resources that we have in place the learning support center those kinds of things because we are all going through this together the teachers are now receiving students who may have had holes from last year and from three different previous teachers and so those things are a challenge and they've done a great job our faculty of picking the kids up where they are going back a little bit and reviewing and so on but so i'd say academic concerns
050a little bit the kids have you know getting back into the homework thing a little bit but i think for the most part they're thrilled to be back in school they're thrilled to be connected when we have activities and meetings and things after school it's amazing the number of students who show up so a friend of mine is an advisor to one particular club and he was always lucky to have four or five students show up they had 35 students show up at their first meeting another group of boys in our school started the chess club hasn't been in existence 37 kids showed up the first day so students are really anxious to get reconnected to school to each other to the adults in the building and so i think part of it is just
051really i think just transitioning back into the you know the life of a five day a week student and what that involves and entails and some students you know if you think of our 10th graders for example i mean the last normal year they had was what seventh grade right eighth grade was cut short they didn't have a typical ninth grade year and now they're sophomores looking ahead and you could say that for each year and again i'm sort of wearing my high school hat when i talk about that i don't know if the elementary or middle schools have any other thoughts they'd like to add challenges that you're seeing this fall of your students my pleasure i'm kathy haley i'm one of the elementary counselors and i think heidi really summed up the um
052extent of what we're seeing at the elementary level i think the endurance of a full school day i think knowing what school means and what that means for a student um kind of just learning what it is has shown it i think the unknown for some of our students as to what it was going to be like what it's going to be for safety um has shown i think by this time we're usually having students know the routine and i think for the most part we are but we still have some students that are like what is this and i have to be here all this time but i think that they're really finding comfort in the schedule and in coming to school so the anxiety that heidi was talking about is there but we're
053happy to be there to provide support thanks kathy good anything else any other questions i had a question about um just making students aware of services i was talking to hannah who couldn't be here this evening and um she was interested in i know you have the website you're talking about doing more on the website but so many of our kids are they're social media instagram and you know they have brojo of course but um i know she's very much interested in ways to use those resources to do social me um to do mental health emotional health campaigns and reach out to our students as well i think those would be great ways to to reach out to our high school students yes that's great we do have a facebook page and an instagram account
054and kelly anything else instagram facebook yeah counseling center i can get i can get you those links okay and that's something we could use more actively though around this topic that's not this isn't the topic that we have used it for historically but we can certainly talk to hannah and uh you know perhaps put some of those resources out there things that we that we might that might be supportive of the students sorry you provided quite a bit of information for us um very thorough report so please don't take our lack of questions for now no no no perfectly comfortable with a lack of questions um for us already um did any other questions or thoughts from the board at this point no just thank you all great thank you thanks for having us we
055appreciate it and if we can get one of those nice dogs for the board i would appreciate it thank you very much they they well and i could give a shout out to dana but dana maybe 10 years ago said before i retire we're going to have a dog in our school and i sort of thought oh do you really think so i don't know if we're ready for that we'll see you think it could really happen and here we are look at the whole cast of characters so starting with kiki and thanks to you for your support because you know certainly it's not every district that sort of allows dogs and i'm on a social media group myself of therapy dogs and the battles that people face to try to get dogs into schools
056and if they could only see the difference that they make not just for our students but for our staff i watched as maisie walked around and write the body language and the disarming that the dogs have it's really tremendous so we're appreciative of your support of this program as well so thank you that doesn't mean dana can retire though no no that's not happening good one daryl thank you again we appreciate it next on the agenda president's report in our last meeting we talked about just expanding our board communication making sure we're getting more information out to the board so i'm going to work on some ideas for that that i will share with the board soon [Music] we do have our retreat date coming up in your packet you have background materials for the
057retreat the culturally responsive sustaining education framework network you have sample dei policies and the agenda which was developed at the last dei committee meeting so it would should be a pretty good conference we have a lot planned a lot to unpack for that evening here we go does anyone have any questions about the agenda for that night i do appreciate the help from the dei committee and putting that together jason i think you're the only one here who's not onto ei so do you have any questions about the agenda okay thank you very much all right next on the agenda superintendent's report dr thais certainly thank you president mims uh the reports uh back to back here located in board docs for you under the superintendent's report staff development day on tuesday november 2nd we
058hosted a professional development day to focus on the first tenant of the culturally responsive sustaining education framework which is to provide a welcoming and affirming environment i would like to thank dr mary coughlin and jonah johnson for organizing the productive day which featured a keynote from mr mark mambretti an administrator school administrator with the east aurora uh school district near buffalo who has been trained at the disney institute mark's message of encouraging and engaging all students and all means all included anecdotes about walt disney himself all the way to his last message a story about a part-time disney security guard who often goes the extra mile to engage the children as he welcomes them to the magic kingdom a follow-up survey was administered to the staff and we're still looking at the results from that
059but they would like more information on the crsc framework so we'll have our work cut out for us going through all four tenets with the staff as we go forward under strategic planning update with the third iteration of the strategic planning posters already to deliver to the district facilities and the wonderful presentation by our building administrators we are looking forward to finalizing the district superintendent board of ed goals for the months ahead here so i look forward to our conversations later in the agenda in the event that one of those goals centers upon universal pre-kindergarten i'm pleased to report that we're continuing our conversations about the many different possibilities that exist include partnering with outside agencies as part of the rfp process or hosting the upk program itself i look forward to reporting back to
060the board in december about our deliberations this autumn and finally under capital project update as you are aware we hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony at wellwood middle school to officially and ceremoniously open the new and renovated facilities in addition to the ceremony we were able to conduct numerous tours at 2 4 and 6 p.m to over 120 interested community members so with one capital improvement project almost complete nearly four years after the referendum in december 2017 our school district is making final preparations to host another public referendum for district residents um this uh next month tuesday december 5th 2021 for a 52 million dollar pro project that will focus on fayetteville manlius high school so as we did at the last meeting i'd like to give you a sneak peek for a video that will provide
061an overview for all that will be addressed at the high school as part of this capital improvement project we anticipate pushing this video out using social media in the weeks ahead the video will be augmented with a capital improvement project district newsletter that's being readied for publication as we speak and a community hearing public hearing on the project on november 30th at the high school cafeteria this is a project that has no fluff this is a project that has no waste everything is essential and will have an impact on every student that walks through these doors when you look at fayetteville manly's high school it was designed for the purposes and functionality of the 1960s and the curriculum of the 1960s this is what we call the the underpass and so we have a staff
062member that stands out here between every passing period morning takes students a very long time to get from one side of the building to the other the connecting corridors were not designed to move 1400 students all the same time between the two buildings and so what we have is we have students walking outside create security concerns that's one of the hallways to get students from house one house tip one of the the largest additions as a part of this project is a connecting corridor now the connecting corridor isn't a hallway uh it's actually an opportunity to build a student commons that will also be cafeteria but more importantly make the building feel more unified and then it also addresses those security concerns that we have one piece that we desperately need is an ability to
063be able to serve and feed our students in a more efficient manner see maximum occupancy same sign that was probably hung in 1961 when it opened we would have to start lunches at approximately 8 30 in the morning to get every single student to have a lunch if we even wanted to this will provide some great flexibility and able to feed students but also opens up the door for how we schedule we're gonna make that pop so one of the positives of this project is trying to unify or centralize some services for students all of our mental health counseling services will be in one location looking for an opportunity to consolidate all of these services into one area increases accessibility for students but also families so parents community members will have better easier access ultimately
064to us original 1960 boilers talking about the hvac system of the high school we're talking about two completely different systems you have inefficiencies in both systems and unfortunately you don't have consistent air temperature and so students are moving from hot and cold spaces of course when you have those levels of inconsistencies that impacts student learning students aren't always comfortable in those settings and so providing a much more reliable efficient system will be beneficial to students not to mention it'll increase airflow throughout the whole facility which of course living in this covid pandemic is a positive because we know how much air circulation and air quality impacts our students i saw it our technology rooms they were designed in the 50s it's when technology was known as wood shop we don't have wood shop anymore but
065we're still working in a facility that was not designed for wood shops so there's about 240 students coming through this facility in one day and it's just small because of the size of our studio we've had students who have not been able to gain access to the courses because we have had to cap the size at a certain amount unfortunately you know even beyond the quality of the work that the students are producing and how hard they're working that the space just has not had the opportunity and the flexibility to grow with them it's limiting the students because we can't do the projects that we would like to do like for example this is an auto tech class that i'm teaching right now and unless the weather's nice we can't work on a car because
066we can't pull a car into our shop if we could get a facility where we could house larger projects like that it would really open up a lot of opportunities for our students i think one of the most important things about the capital improvement plan is that for the first time in the program's history it will have its own space it will have a space that's designed with the curriculum in mind and our hopes is that we can continue to kind of expand those programs and use this space to the best of its ability [Music] and that ends my first report any questions so craig i guess just a point of clarification uh the vote is tuesday december 7th correct i'm sorry i said the fifth yeah yeah there was a typo in the report
067no big deal but just to emphasize to the community it is on the 7th of december um and i'll speak on behalf of our colleague who's not here tonight his favorite phrase but it is very true this is the one building in the district that all the students pass through um and so to get this building updated um and bring it from 1960 up to 2021 is just to the utmost importance uh so i really hope that people will take a few minutes on the seventh thing and come out and support the vote thanks craig additional questions video was amazing and now from the sports desk as i teased at the last meeting here are the statistics along with some news that mr gordon shared with me at the end of the day item one
068covet update is the month of december races towards the thanksgiving holiday today we have had 88 confirmed cases in the school district with 58 coming at the secondary school middle high school level and 30 at the elementary level nevertheless those 30 positive cases resulted in 100 quarantines an average of about 3.3 across all three elementary schools whereas there have only been about 43 quarantines at the secondary level less than one per positive case because many of these students have been vaccinated as far as the quarantine analysis i'm pleased to report that thanks to the efforts of everyone to spread out the students during the lunch periods in an attempt to reduce the quarantines there have been far fewer today we have had drastically limited the number at the elementary school more specifically that since the
069district implemented new procedures during lunch the quarantines have dwindled to only two students at the elementary level since the initial 98 quarantines so i think that tells you something right there as far as a symptomatic update at this point in the school year the district sent home about 242 students because they were symptomatic this includes 79 students at the high school about 39 students each at each of the middle schools and an average of about 30 children at each of the elementary buildings so given our enrollment as a district i think this is testimonial to the hard work of our families to keeping their children home if they are symptomatic as far as state department of health guidance last week was our final time to administer the weekly rapid binax now covet testing to those
070employees who had not been vaccinated mr gordon has been working to move the weekly testing from the rapid testing to the swab testing that occurs on fridays with our surveillance testing that was a switch with the county as well moving away from the rapid testing so those employees will have to register on the quadrant biosciences website and the testing will begin this friday using the swab testing on november 12th keep in mind that as a service we offer we're not obligated to have to provide that on-site testing but certainly it helps our employees as far as surveillance testing as mentioned earlier the county continues to collaborate with all of us for the random surveillance testing in fact we sent out another reminder to our families to see if anybody else would like to enroll over
071the course of the past few weeks fm has sampled 467 total so this is since the beginning of school 423 students 44 staff with no reported positive cases in the portal and then last but not least the good news the on-site covet vaccination clinic as mentioned before we're partnering with onondaga county to offer an on-site vaccination clinic that's tentatively scheduled now officially scheduled for tuesday november 16th from 4 30 to 8 30 pm at fm high school in the house 1 lobby near the auditorium the clinic is now confirmed and so we will be sending out a link tomorrow to our families informing them of the clinic and then the follow-up clinic three weeks later after pre-registering on the county website parents and guardians will have to accompany their child to the clinic which will
072be administered by kinney drugs the kenny president reached out to us as well kenny druggs anticipates being able to vaccinate about 20 children per hour so that will allow about 80 children to be vaccinated and registrations will be accepted on a first come first serve basis that ends my covet update thank you dr um hannah did have a question she wanted to know if there were any changes um regarding indoor winter sports as far as restrictions uh we are requesting and well not requesting but mandating masks to be used indoors for spectators and that social distancing be followed so families within the same unit can sit closer together those from outside the family unit will have to be the appropriate social distancing and that's been reinforced at different meetings with the county as well at
073this time we are not limiting the tickets but we have to help our families be mindful of staying socially distant thank you other questions for dr tyus jason yeah so craig just to follow up on that so that's the sports piece so what about you know we're getting into concert season um so has there been any determination or any updates you can share there same thing masks will be required for indoor venues and that family units can sit closer together outside of that particular family unit they'll have to be the appropriate social distancing but again at this time we're not limiting tickets i mean it's it's based on people following through with that guidance if we're forced to down the road we'll have to do that but we're trying to take the board's directive if
074you remember get back to normal as much as possible so we're certainly going to have to all work together on this going forward but if for some reason we can't as a community handle that obligation then certainly we could limit tickets down the road but that's not our first goal we're trying to get as many people into the different events as possible i'm gonna follow sorry jason were you finished okay i'm gonna follow up on that in that and i don't know i've been to elementary and middle school concerts where there's no way that we could family units could stay you know six feet away from another family unit they're wall-to-wall people i don't know if elementary and middle schools are planning any winter concerts this year where that would be an issue but i'm
075wondering if that has been brought up we've talked about that nothing right now it'll be post january 1st and we're looking at other venues as well so again we want to get back as the board said to the events where we can return to some normalcy as much as possible but if we have to we will down the road and have to limit participation but that's going to end up excluding family members as well well there are some concerts coming up from like at wellwood for example that are going to be at the high school so there's more opportunity to socially distance and all that good to know i don't have neither of my children are in the music program so it's good to know that that's been already thought of so dr tais just
076uh kind of make sure i heard so in general most events that are held will be in person at this time correct and some maybe we may be waiting until a little bit later into the year to my understanding is the elementary concerts have been pushed off a little bit until we get a better handle on it in some events as we talked a second ago will be shifted to other venues for example with wellwood still under construction any concerts there will have to be moved to a different venue okay until the construction is complete and where you may have said this and i missed it but will there be virtual options for maybe people that don't feel comfortable attending in person that's right if you give me enough clues i'll finally pick up on
077it and yes we met with the music department and talked about live streaming so for those that feel that they can't maintain social distancing they have that option as well yeah i mean i don't know that i don't know that logistics of i can only imagine that adds a lot more work for our staff but it's a great option in the pandemic it's also a great option for families that are living in different places so um just a thought and then my other question was first of all just to finish on that two we won't be recording it in terms of copyright so we'll live stream as the event is occurring but there will not be a recording to go back to yeah that seems fair to me in terms of the on-site clinic that's
078great news um congratulations to jeff for securing that i'm just wondering if that's about 80 students and there is more need which we might anticipate will we follow up in in short order with some additional clinics scheduled so families that miss out don't feel that there's no other option for them at this time uh clearly it sounds like the interest is not just in our district but other districts as well when the county executive rolled it out he talked about pharmacies such as wegmans and walgreens providing the service so for kinney to enter the picture as well i think certainly there's a groundswell of interest and so yeah i mean depending on the popularity assuming we fill all 80 slots that people take full advantage of it you know if there's a need for more
079we certainly can see what we can do thanks again i just wanted to jump in and say the high school had a fantastic concert i saw you daryl from from from a distance um that was out that was live streamed as well so my parents in north carolina were able to watch which was fantastic but yeah it's a nice feature to have so thank you for everyone who sets that up any additional questions for dr thais okay next on the agenda committee and representative updates um let's see audit met on the 27th yeah um you saw katie phillips tonight she was a part of our meeting on the 27th uh other than that i'm sure you all read your report um we are continuing to look for a deputy claims auditor so we'll keep you
080posted thank you daryl community relations rebecca i believe i reported out at the last meeting okay and then our very our new dei committee chair kelly uh well i won't reiterate what's in the report but um you know we briefly discussed the welcome statement and how it'll be the introductory sentence of the policy that is currently being worked on um and we talked about the board retreat um and where we'll discuss some of the uh dei uh goal setting that we've been that we talked about thank you kelly and we'll update that in board doc so your name is in there dan isn't here for facilities but we did see the great video um highlighting the capital project dr thais was there anything you wanted to add or is there anything anyone from facilities oh
081just the correction that jason caught it's december 7th okay i believe finance reported the last meeting i know uh mark is listening in i think waiting for his voice to appear nope okay um polithee met on the 19th sherry did you want to share anything yeah we've had two policy meetings since our last meeting and we just continued to go through the dei policy thank you and how about from the education foundation there's a meeting next week but still looking for members to join for next year or for the next calendar year like starting in january or we may not be able to continue with the fmef and it may have to go dormant again really there's not that's that low of a level of interest in people participating that's correct wow i think did
082did you discuss you discussed at the last meeting as well is that all right correct yeah and so i i don't know if anybody has reached out to fmef uh the if to that board um i haven't heard anything um but there is a meeting next week and hopefully they'll there will be some new faces so when you say they need more folks so they've got like the executive board is it more like that's our executive board is ready to step down it's the same executive board that started in five years ago and nobody has taken over any of those positions i think we've had one person step in in the past five years but those that small group has run the whole thing with nobody else stepping in to help so they're all ready
083to move on to other ventures and they need people to take their places okay um have we put anything on the web page about their need for new folks to step in is there something we can do to send that out to the community yeah we can we can certainly provide some in-kind support in terms of their reorganization yep okay um sure legislatively uh we did have on october 18th the day that i popped into the meeting about two and a half hours late this meeting um i was in the annual business meeting and um we discussed as a board a few weeks before that the um the resolutions that we would support and the ones that we would vote against and it went exactly as we had hoped every every resolution that we hoped
084that nisba would go out and advocate for um was passed and everyone that we hoped that they would not advocate for did not pass including the one that uh that jeff gordon spoke to that originally nisba had said they did not recommend this one um i spoke to the group about how we should support making it a little easier for teachers from out of state to get their new york state teaching license and two other people from other districts spoke in agreement with me and then the the group ended up voting in agreement with us so everything went our way and it was a long but productive meeting i think the length was not because of any problems the length was because it was a virtual meeting where any participant who wanted to speak there
085was 30 minutes 30 30 seconds to a minute of the technology catching up and that person being allowed to speak so it just slowed everything down but it was a productive meeting sherry good for you to speak up i'm proud of you thank you sherry and hannah's not here this evening but i did raise her points with the uh earlier during the emotional health presentation um okay so next on the agenda under new business 3.01 approval of the minutes from the september 13th 2021 regular meeting is there a motion to approve the minutes thank you rebecca and the stagger from daryl any discussion all those in favor please indicate i i you're an opposed or abstaining next item 3.02 approval of the minutes of october 18th 2021 is there a motion to approve those minutes
086thank you kelly in a second from jason any discussion all those in favor please indicate i i you want to pose you're abstaining i am 3.03 policy and first reading is there a motion that to be resolved at the board of education of the fayetteville manly essential school district hereby moves revised policy 1530 into second reading at the next board meeting thank you jason second from kelly any discussion i think we have an email from dan that this would be revised a bit i i don't see it that it's revised here but um it's going to be revival second reading first should we approve it i mean should we talk about the revision now or it was just to make it uh by the superintendent or the superintendent's designee and then also to add a
087line about having a clerk protest for meetings and i think there was language that was suggested by sarah that we received in an email was that to everybody oh that was just to our that was just a policy so this one is not ready then to move into the second reading we might it's ready okay so sarah should should i read out the changes let me i'll have to find the email give me just a minute 15 30. all right so um let's see the minutes of all meetings shall be recorded by the clerk or in the clerk's absence by a clerk pro tem appointed by the board of education the minutes of all meetings shall be kept by the clerk or in the clerk's absence by the superintendent or the superintendent's designee which that
088aligns more with our practice rather than what's here that it just talks about the keeping of the minutes by the clerk and then the superintendent so if we make that change we can move it on to second rebecca you're lucky you're about to hit the button or no no questions okay so and please correct me if i do my motion wrong sarah but is there a motion to move into second reading the policy into second reading with the stated revisions thank you for a motion thank you jason second from kelly any further discussion although the saber please indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining all right uh okay 3.04 policies in second reading is there a motion that will be resolved that the board of education or the fatal manly central school district hereby approves
089the revised revised policies 1110 1900 and 5210 in second reading thank you jason second from kelly any discussion all those in favor please indicate i i you want to pose drip staining next item 3.05 resolution special patrol officer agreement is there a motion that the board of education a fayetteville manly central school district hereby acknowledges the termination letter as presented by the superintendent and hereby approve the special patrol officer agreement as presented thank you daryl second from rebecca any discussion marissa just a question on page 14 we've got some blanks in there that looks like maybe the information wasn't inserted so on page 14 it's addendum b and i just wasn't clear as to why so you're saying that when they when they enter their information they'll be putting that part in there so then
090are we just approving a draft of the agreement tonight waiting for the we have to approve the draft and then the town approves and then we come back and approve it final the practice has been that the board of education of the school district approves then it goes to the town for approval and execution of the agreement okay so in a motion in a second all those in favor please raise your hand in ki i am opposed or abstaining next item 3.06 goal planning so the board has been provided with some draft besides the word draft goals superintendent and board goals and these are not in any way meant to replace the work that's being done in our buildings we had an outstanding report from our administrators at the last meeting these are some areas
091of interest in particular to the board and that's why we do have board and superintendent goals each year so what sherry and i mostly sherry thank you sherry [Laughter] did is put the um thoughts of the board from our last meeting into this draft form so that we could discuss this and see how this now aligns or or how it does align with what the board had in mind and dr tice was the one who for each of the superintendent goals put in that chart to make it a smart goal as we discussed at the last meeting so is the idea for the superintendent goals that that verbiage would remain the same with the additional smart goal kind of subtext so the chart would accompany each bullet i think that's what we can discuss today
092okay um because we had asked dr tice to make them into smart goals um and the chart is in my opinion a great format for doing so in the past we haven't had charts within our goals so with that we can discuss tonight do we want to keep the charts as part of our goals that will be published or do we want the chart to be somewhat background information for us to use was it difficult to do dr tais i mean i took a certainly a stab at it the board can edit as you see fit i'll stand by my original comment at the last meeting that as a governance team we should be at the 30 000 foot view i know some of you requested the smart goal format so i was happy to
093comply if this isn't what you were thinking of or we need to tweak it a little certainly um i'm open-minded to that but again as a governance team i think we chart direction and then we leave the specifics for the other officers to implement you know from the building district administrators building administrators faculty and staff i mean they're the ones that get into the weeds as opposed to right so it wasn't difficult it's just i i still wrestle with if if the board was looking for that to hold me and the district accountable that's one thing but again i i trust in terms of approach that we've used here to delegate and to get input from the field i do value the input of the faculty and the building administrators and the district office administrators
094i just think there's a lot of internal expertise that can be brought to bear on this unfortunately the board member who asked for this isn't here but the chart is interesting it makes it maybe more readable but i hate to put any extra work on you that's my problem what it does do daryl that i do kind of like though is that it is especially around dei just makes it that much more transparent to the community so i think you know last year as part of our board goal was we were getting educated as a board and we were you know very much at that higher level um and we've had constituents come and speak and talk about well you guys have kind of talked about it but you haven't you know the rubber hasn't
095met the road yet right and so what i like about this chart is is it does give a little bit more specifics it's still at a high level but gives us some more specifics and helps us to start to to put a timeline out for the community so i i do kind of like um this format um it is a little bit more detailed there's no no doubt about that but i do like the idea of us starting to set some timelines i agree i think it's um i think it's helpful to have it in there i don't think it um i think it really clarifies the expectations and uh i agree i think it is makes it a little bit more transparent and to go back to mr seidberg's comment that he shared in
096an email i know he's not here to speak to it but in terms of taking a look at all of our research on school start times in no way was this to presume that a decision's already been made other than to communicate the following and i'm sure a lot of you have picked up on this already if we just slide or if we just flip and we don't do as dr lewin said flip and slide that our high school is still at the minimum number of hours so our waiver runs out this year thank you spectre the waiver runs out and so we do need to move into a position to lengthen the high school day especially if dr kilmer and the faculty and staff are going to think about changes to the schedule and
097what that looks like it just were barely meeting the 990 hours as far as with the way we do lunch periods and i think he attested to some of that in the video tonight about the project but so my point in saying flip and slide wasn't to pick an area it was to try to maximize the hours that were not maximized to increase the hours at the high school as we do this going forward i think we just have to be mindful of that or we could be audited and so thanks for that clarification there i also think and this is i guess kind of as a board it's our selfish selfish end but having this chart here will make our discussions during our annual review process a lot easier so it's something that i've
098been advocating for for a number of years is to have some sort of how to evaluate in here and this gives us a how to evaluate yeah i was going to say the same thing i mean do you feel comfortable that these are high high level enough to me they seem like they are because you know it's saying the what we're going to do kind of at a high level when it's going to be accomplished by and to sherry's point helps us all be on the same page and how we evaluate this but um i think it still leaves the how for the most part to the district um and and you know i was combing through the again the um you know the fantastic building goals reports and i feel like this is aligned
099you know that's what i mentioned at the i think the last meeting was that i you know it makes sense to me to have all of this stuff aligned and you know i think for myself i felt a little bit like are we like behind the curve where you know the district was setting the goals but you know i think as a board we just need to remember that we should be aligning ourselves with the strategic plan that you know plan on a page and you know we can we can discuss how to maybe revise that going forward but do you feel okay right now with how these are written assuming it seems like we're all on the same page that for us it's helpful to have the charts yeah i think this is still
100closer to the 30 000 foot view it certainly gives the house as you said to the building administration and the faculty you know for example on the dei certainly this first workshop was a kickoff we still have to delve into the document we're starting to do that now with our district curriculum council the administrators kind of took the lead a few months ago with that we're still digging into it we don't want to move too fast we don't want to move too slow we're going to get criticized no matter what we do from those who don't want us to do anything to those who want us to fix it yesterday so i think we have to follow the board of regents i think we have to roll up our sleeves the teachers have asked to
101be involved so the trick is is not to get to the one of the lines we use is not to get ahead of our skis a little bit here and we don't want to face plant but at the same time we don't want to lag behind either so i think we want to methodically and meticulously go through this so we all understand it better not just as a governance team and i know thanks to marissa's work in the central new york school boards they will be setting up webinars with dr theo harris i believe beginning in january working through to the annual central new york school board's dinner that's often held at the lodge in skinny atlas in may so the idea will be to try to give the board a flavor of some of
102the things that in our case the some of the administrators have worked on some of the teachers with district curriculum council i had a chance to stop in on the staff development day in the afternoon for a workshop that they were doing with the trainers from boces so i think we need to understand it before we start making decisions i think we get ourselves in trouble when we make decisions without fully understanding all the parts to it and if you really dig into the crsc as some of you have it's amazing i mean there's there's a lot of thoughtful work there from dr rosa and dr young and all the contemporaries on the board of regents i think it it's being mischaracterized by some elements both far right and far left i think if you
103take a look at it things are going to resonate in terms of a welcoming environment like that all means all all students and so i'm excited about the work but at the same time i don't want to get ahead of ourselves either so long answer than what you wanted but i'm comfortable with this i think it charts that direction i i just to weigh in i really like this because i think we still have the high level goals in the bulleted format and then and then the chart for smart chart for each goal basically gives us a sense of where you're headed what you think that how that translates into action and i think that that was the piece that i was looking for so i don't know that i was i was looking for
104it exactly i mean i didn't i didn't have vision i think you did a great job so i appreciate it i think the goals this is pretty lofty these are a lot of goals but i think collectively they really do hit on our main concerns that we've been talking about and i would just go to the last goal with respect to coved as you can see it's still in draft form where i put the question mark there of do we want this here right so i was just going to address that you asked about the goal about the impact of covitt on student achievement and mental health which is in some ways a question i asked tonight of heidi green um i think there could be a way to include that into that sentence to
105say well supporting the mental health and or emotional health and student achievement of students you know i don't know the exact language i don't know that we need to wordsmith it but i think it's important to live there with respect to covid is that something others are interested in is just making that parentheses the question that i put in parentheses into a sentence that can be part of this goal i would like to see that i think we should get um updates and then what the action items are that are being done to address any gaps that we identify in student achievement and related to mental health um due to the impact of cove i think that's something we definitely need to have on an ongoing basis and again we heard that tonight so i
106think some of that could just be reporting out you know on the work that is already being done and just to echo what's already been said getting to see the action the building action plans and all the work that is already in in play and in motion is tremendous and i think we're just trying to sync up and make sure that we're all in alignment and to me this does reflect the action plans and what dr dice has also described as his focuses for the year i i'm okay with uh just typing that in right now so we can get this approved or we can and i can share the document or do we want to bring it to the next meeting or i don't know how we want to well considering dr tyson's mid-year
107is just yeah exactly i think we need to approve this this evening if possible okay i i have no pressure it's currently in google doc format um it should i can share it with everyone and you can watch me type it or we can just say it out loud or yeah can you just read it okay so what am i saying the board will be provided with regular updates regarding the impact of covert 19 on student achievement and mental health board will be provided with regular updates with regard to the impact of covet covert 19 on student achievement and mental or emotional health we want to follow the yeah much of our counseling our emotional health the impact of cover 19. so are we putting this in like the bullet goal because that seems more
108like an activity like a house but maybe should go on the chart what were you saying rebecca can you say it again i think i had the right exact language but i thought even at the end of the sentence which ends with provide the least restrictive environment for students during the ongoing pandemic you know with a focus on student student emotion student emotional health and any achieve achieve i don't like achievement gaps but basically just that we're trying to keep schools open with a least destructive environment keeping in mind mental health and academic achievement which seem to be the two focus areas of where things have been most challenging for students with the pandemic so it can all be once the goal can stay as one sentence where just after the word pandemic add the
109words with a focus on student achievement and emotional health maybe on maintaining student achievement and emotional health emotional health before student achievement maintaining emotional health supporting emotional health supporting emotional health and maintaining and maintaining student achievement i'll read it one more time after i type it focus on supporting student i was supporting my sorry emotional okay i have after the word pandemic with a focus on supporting emotional health and maintaining student achievement i think we could say supporting for not to exactly i think supporting covers both of those okay supporting and and student achievement okay i'll take out the word maintaining um now we did it just now we were talking we said we could we could get uh regular updates with regard to the impact of covid on those things that would then go
110into the smart smart goals area i don't is it already there it is i mean provide an overview of mental health supports and plan improvements where needed to me that can be ongoing it's i think i think it's already in the specific goals it's just now it'll be reflected in the general goal great i do want to i do want to go back a little bit to the the school start time and the announcing the flip and slide i guess my concern and i don't know if this was dan's concern as well but i guess my concern is i don't know how many people in the community might understand that nuance around the hours of instruction and the high school and i it's possible without and i'm you know you correct me if i'm wrong
111i don't i don't remember if that was part of any of the surveying or the information around the surveying so i guess i'm concerned that people might see this and be like well why did we do a survey if at the end of the day we had to do this one thing because it's the only way to get to the number of hours we need so i think that's just my my concern with that and the community understanding and feeling like their view you know i think that i don't want to say too much about what the survey results were but like this i mean everyone knows what the survey results were and i just want to know that i just want the community to understand that you know their thoughts and you know were
112taken into consideration so i guess that's what the wording here it makes it i do understand the point that he was getting at one of the things that i wrestle with in terms of liking symmetry i mean as we all know we triple trip and high school arrives then middle then elementary and then dismissal high school dismisses then middle than elementary so to go to your point i think what intrigues me and yes we did survey the community yes this is the last year for our waiver for the high school but as we look at the different options going forward and this is tough for me because i like symmetry in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and economy as i look at my business official we like symmetry i think one of the things we're
113going to have to wrestle with is the asymmetry so i think we can do both to go to your point i think we can honor the feedback we receive from the community i think we can honor the science that dr lewin you know talked to us about and was echoed back from the community about adolescence and eating more time and sleeping in but i think where we're going to get our answer is in the asymmetry because i don't think it's going to look like that pretty package for arrival and dismissal and i think where the high school will get some extra time because they need it the elementaries have excess time that'll shrink but the answer is going to be in the asymmetry i think the arrivals and dismissals will change to accommodate both what
114the community told us to do but or wanted but also to accommodate what albany is asking for us going forward and i think it's finding that merger and the merger isn't going to be in the symmetry so that's again my fault for picking those terms there other than to say we just can't keep the symmetry with the slide or keep the symmetry with the flip there's going to have to be something that introduces that x variable of making it asymmetrical that gives us a few extra minutes at the high school takes away a few extra minutes at the elementary school and everybody goes home happy does that make sense yeah i mean so do we have to say like the flip and slide there it might confuse things a little can we just say announce
115the community you know the need for a schedule adjustment to lengthen the day and also to address the results of the student start time study you just said announce to the community a sorry the language you just said i can type it right in and now it's the community um a i don't know a proposed schedule adjustments right just delete flip and slide okay schedule adjustment to lengthen the fm school day to comply with the and and to comply with the new york state ed department mandate or just to comply well to i mean i think it's to lengthen the school day to comply and honor or you know right where do we want to address address the results of the school start time oh and honor results right yep does that make sense yep
116yeah okay so honor and honor results of school start time survey study or maybe address okay address and address okay announce to the community a schedule adjustment to lengthen the fmhs school day to comply with new york state ed mandates and address results of school start time study everyone's good all right so if there's nothing more on that we can move down to board goals and see what people's thoughts are on the language that we developed here did you notice the second one the board will examine ways the district can promote a healthy climate when addressing student discipline and how restorative justice practices can be incorporated that's one that continues from last year that we really did not get to last year and we marissa and i for this just added that last sentence that
117um includes student input yes i would also say i you know i don't want to assume by wanting to learn more about this that some of that isn't already happening in the district so i guess maybe student and staff input and feedback i just you know i absolutely don't want to discount the fact that there might be some of that already going on added i mean if we're going to be inclusive then i think it's also community and parents i don't know exactly i think what if we said fm community yeah i think it should be including everybody involved so instead of students and staff just use fm community input [Music] okay then the first one is about developing a district dei policy based on the culturally responsive sustained education framework and launching that framework
118district-wide mission and vision will be updated to include diversity equity and inclusion and i think the messaging with this is very important um the people understand that there is a lot of community involvement that's required in this um i mean it says in specifically in there that it's about promoting a relationship of trust and respect between schools and families and i definitely think in today's climate we really need to emphasize that that's part of what we're doing just a comment that um our goal of updating the mission envision is also in the smart goal of dr tyson's first one in the um where is it the real is the realistic is that right we're sorry oh there it is um it this the the second one of dr tyson's first goals is the exact same
119thing i mean i think that we do work as a team so it can be a goal for all of us together and ironically as i mentioned the last time we were together the plan to plan if those of you that remember that binder in terms of the strategic planning and the plan on a page if you follow that you will see we're right where we're supposed to be in terms of checking all the boxes in the deming cycle we're back to taking a look at our vision and mission it just so hope happens to coincide with our dei work and policy work but we were scheduled to revisit that anyhow maybe we keep the vision and mission the same maybe we adjust it but it's part of revisiting it on a more regular basis
120so it doesn't become a museum piece that the idea is to make it dynamic and a living document so are you saying that you're cool with it being both in one of your goals and our goal too i think ultimately that's what we want all together i mean when board goals align with a superintendent district goals aligned with the whole strategic plan that just i think shows the compass needles all pointing in the right direction which i think is a sign of a healthy organization great so on that point i just wanted to clarify um those smart goals for that for your for the superintendent first goal of developing a dei policy and eliciting feedback from the district dei committee are we talking about our current ad hoc board committee or are we talking about
121the committee that we intend to form for the community which is also required by the state uh both or neither i didn't try to get out ahead of the skis here i mean it could be our dei ad hoc but it could be the one that's referred to in the crsc framework the road map and policy of putting a committee together in terms of involving stakeholders community members parents students faculty and so forth so it really is our choice and again i did not want to be prescriptive so i left it vague but it could be both neither i mean i think it's up to us so those are conversations we'll have about the timing of when we form the committee and specifically what they'll be what the role will be and what part at
122what point in the process they drop in so that we know when we have community feedback but i think those will be critical conversations to to have and also you know to get a sense of best practices of what other districts have been or even corporations have been successful doing so we because at the end of the day we want to have the buy-in um i know we can't do everything we're going to have to take some actions as a board and lead but i think well you know i just well i hope we'll have those thoughtful conversations so we're well planned i believe those are the start of that is on our agenda for next week's retreat and i think that's important we don't want to operate in a vacuum i think we want
123the feedback i think committees can hold a mirror up to it but ultimately the governance team is responsible for the district so you know this is the supervising governance team i mean a committee can't replace our work but again we do not operate in a vacuum i think having that feedback and that input or having others hold a mirror up to us is helpful but still the decision-making power rests with us and we've had committees give advisory opinions on when we went to fulda kindergarten school resource officers wellwood so there's a long history of getting that community feedback okay um so i think the only thing left on there on board goals with the question is as to whether or not we want to make that communication piece the actual goal or is that just
124something that we feel we're going to be able to that we would do personally i'd rather not make a goal that we do that monthly because there may be some months since i'd likely be the one doing it that i wouldn't get to it but certainly to increase communication and with a um eye on having more publication and i'm thinking digital publication so that it's not something we're sending out in the like a newsletter but something that's posted online which will also be less work for the staff as well so um yeah i think that should be i i wouldn't put something that like that specific venue like channel necessarily because there might be a reason to or not do it any given month or there might be others i don't want to limit us
125to just that as well so if we decide that we want to improve our own communications i mean it's you know it's not the easiest thing to measure if we don't kind of think about like what that means or or increase our communications but i do i do see it as as written here as kind of a guiding principle that we should always strive for so i kind of hesitate to make it as like a goal unless it's like it's a i mean it's just something we should always be trying to get better at so is everyone okay with not having it as a goal just more of a guiding principle we're very much aware of this is something we're going to be doing especially considering the different topics that we're going to be we're
126going to continue to work on yeah i i don't think it belongs as a board goal but i would take it one step further than a guiding principle i would say it's a focus item for us and we need to we need to task the right people with that so i think it's going back to crc to work with our communications team and dr tice to figure out what does that look like what is what does the community want to hear specifically from the board versus the other plethora of communications from the district so there's meaningful impactful communications i don't think a monthly board's eye view is necessarily what people are looking for but perhaps um i don't know i actually would leave that to the experts so i think the specific action item there
127is let's get it on our and many of us are on the crc let's get it on that agenda and let's keep talking about it so that we could put something in place i agree and i think it's this because we have hand on this committee who can give us that perspective of getting information to our students that it's i think that's a really critical piece because kids aren't going to the website to read board minutes you know they're on social media and how can we connect with them around these issues that we're working on so hannah is on crc we just have to make sure we're mindful of her schedule and as we move forward and just to point out that in our board selfie val there's a communication you know piece to it
128already so we can you know definitely focus on that everybody okay with me hitting delete yeah and i will charge myself as the crc chair making sure that's on the agenda with sarah think i've noted okay so before we i believe we do we've gone through the superintendent goals and come to agreement and we have got our board goals so i think we should approve these this evening is there a motion to approve the 2020 i'm sorry 2122 superintendent and board goals thank you daryl their second thank you kelly further discussion all those in favor please indicate i hi anyone opposed or abstaining excellent okay under board development as discussed earlier we have a retreat coming up on the 15th you there is an agenda in your packet that the dei committee helped put together
129so this will be a very comprehensive retreat regarding dei and the culturally responsive sustaining education framework do you have any questions about the agenda at this time okay working agenda items public comment protocols um i suppose that sometimes we should circle back to that and see if there's anything we want to update i know we did have some discussion at a board meeting but we can wait on that potential considerations for future meetings anything future meeting agenda so yes we have the retreat it's gonna be in high school uh house one lgi and that starts at six o'clock i believe that was the time we agreed on six o'clock okay um then we'll have a library media report on the 13th is the next big report coming up dates to remember oh it's nice to
130see some dates to remember i see of concerts on there and of course the referendum vote on the 7th next the consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented thank you jason and a second from kelly all those in favor please indicate i i you want to post you're abstaining all right we do have some matters for executive session um there a motion to go into executive session to discuss the employment history one two three three individuals thank you jason second from kelly any discussion all those in favor please indicate i anyone opposed or abstaining all right so the board's going to go into executive session and we will adjourn from there without any further business taking place thank you oh