11 Board of Education Meeting, January 13

001Hope there's some feedback. Good evening and welcome to the Guild Central School District's Board of Education meeting. Today is January 13th. Can everyone please silence their cell phones and stand for the pledge? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay. And we can start with public or the high school student update. I don't think we have that today. Um how about public comments? >> Yes, there's one. Um, Carter just have to read a little blurb. The board of education encourages public participation at its meetings and recognizes its responsibility to hear public comment. An acknowledgement of the public comment either orally or in writing will be provided as appropriate after the

002meeting. As a matter of practice, the board of education does not engage in dialogue during the public comment period. There will be two opportunities at each regular board meeting for public comments to be heard. Although the board of education welcomes comments about programs offered by the district and other aspects of the district's operation, the board expressly prohibits public comment that would infringe on a particular person's or students privacy rights would be disrupted of the board meeting or create some safety issues. >> Welcome. >> Good evening uh board uh members of the board. My name is Carter Elwood. I am a part of the Guilon Central School District, but I uh come from a place called Tech Valley High School. That's where I go to school. I'm just here on behalf of myself and anyone else

003from this district who currently attends there or um anyone else from this district who is wishing to uh attend my school or seek enrollment. I just want to say that being given the opportunity to attend the school that I go to um it's been a privilege and it has given me a lot of uh a lot of opportunities and impacts on me in so many ways. Uh during my my time at Tech Valley, I've grown socially and academically and I've done so many things. I've made connections uh you know with classmates, even business professionals alike. And knowing what I know now, um I wholeheartedly believe that um students in this district should be able to have the same opportunity that I uh have been given right now. So, um I just wanted to say thanks

004to the board for making my opportunity possible and I encourage the board to continue to support students that come from my school, Tech Valley. >> Thank you. Okay. And then we can go to our program report. Well, Mr. Finel is loading that. I'll just say thank you for your comment. Um, my my oldest daughter actually wasn't fortunate enough she didn't get selected in the lottery. So, it's always great to hear from students that have had a positive experience. All right. Um, good evening everyone. I'm just going to give you a program overview of the work that we do at Guildawin High School as it relates to English language arts instruction. Um, I'm going to do my best to try to talk about a lot of things as coherently and precisely as possible. going to apologize

005in advance because I the one thing I don't want to do is um not include a lot of the work and things that have been shared with me by students and staff over the past couple weeks and trying to prepare resources, images and stuff and I always feel like what am I listen what am I missing? What am I leaving out? And there's a good chance I might miss something. So I apologize. All right, so just a little bit of an overview. We're going to talk about New York State requirements, standards, changes, how our students are doing at the high school, work that we're doing in the department, programming that we have and opportunities for students, and then talking about what lies ahead in addition to some student work samples, which I think really highlights

006the work that we have been, are, and will continue to do. So, very basically, at the high school, all the students need to have four credits worth of English for graduation. uh in 11th grade grade they have to also take a regent exam. Uh we're going to be shifting from the common core ELA to the next generation regent this June. We have the last administration is actually next week and substantively there's not really too much changes between the common core and the nextG. They're just sort of like merging some grade level bands but by and large it remains the same for the common core ELA. something I just want to um highlight that I think uh is a is a is a is a team asset in English that it's cumulative even though that students

007are subjected to that graduation requirement in 11th grade for that region's exam it's not limited to how they only do in 11th grade but technically speaking it represents the total cumulative effort kindergarten all the way up to 11th grade because students when they're young and they're reading a Dr. Seuss book and they're talking about what's the moral of the story. That doesn't really change. It just gets more complicated, more nuanced. And uh again, it's a cumulative effort for elementary, middle, and high school for student success. So, just to kind of give you a little bit of an overview of things that have changed, try to go back in time. You know, interestingly, I graduated in 1996 and I was thinking like what exam did I take in the day? And I don't remember but that's

008where when New York State had the core curriculum 2005 they had learning standards and this is where we have like the reading writing listening and speaking four basic standards. Common core comes out in 2010 because the whole idea is that we need to have some degree of uniformity among schools. So like if a student has to move there shouldn't be some radically different learning um environment like we should be relatively working towards the same kind of learning outcomes. And what they did um with that time is that they sort of combined speaking and listening. They introduced language and with the reading component they branched off. There's a difference between reading literature and there's a difference between readingformational texts. Fast forward a little bit more to the present, you know, we have the next generation ELA

009standards and again it is very similar to the common core learning standards in there. Along the way, we've had the introduction of culturally responsive instruction like we we need to help have our students see themselves in the work that they learn. Um, some notable changes that I've noticed, right, is that with the common core, when the common core came out, and it was for English, there were standards in there for literacy in the technical areas, social studies, science, things that are non-English because, shocker, English language arts instruction doesn't just happen in an English class. It happens in all content areas. Another thing that is something that we're trying to grapple with appropriately is how do what does digital literacy look like? Kids traditionally have read with books. Now they can read on tablets. Kids traditionally

010when we say writing did that with pen and paper. Writing today when a writing occurs in an English class or any class more often than not it's really probably not writing but it's probably typing. the utility of handwriting has a different value today than it did back then. Uh so again, English is very deliberate in intention. It's flexible. It's an iterative process and it actually impacts all instructional areas. So one of the charges when we're trying to look at what does success mean, right? And we ask that for every student. Success can be different for each student, but we're trying to look at how successful are we as an English department and English program. One of the available measures is the regions exam. The problem with the region's exam is like it's pretty uniform. It's

011consistent. However, it's a very imperfect measure because it's intended to be a graduation requirement, not necessarily um it's not always the best assessment that reflects the unique circumstances of every class. And then the other thing is in there too is that um every year the state scales the score. So there's a raw score and then there's a conversion and that may vary from year to year. An important item of distinction just to be aware of uh is that the regions we look at proficiency which is passing which can be 65 and for some kids it's 55 and then there's an aptitude where there's level five level four level three that level five is 85 to 100 level three is 65 to 79 and level three is that little middle band um but I don't and

012as much as we're going to talk about the regions here for the next couple minutes I don't want to overlook like success tangibly looks different. It can be student participation, student expression, student created projects, student collaboration. So I just don't want to, you know, um, diminish that when we're talking about numbers and performance. So this is how we have been performing over the past 10 years. So just going to highlight a couple things. So with all of the new standards, usually there's a regions exam that is tethered to that that reflects those standards. So again, 20145 was the last time we did the comprehensive English exam and then the new common core ELA came out and the red line reflects our proficiency, which is our pass rate. The blue line is New York State. So

013what you see right before COVID there there is a pretty substantial gap between how our students do in Guilderland and those in New York State. COVID comes along there's no more regions. We have to reset and as one can imagine because we had to go to remote instruction and drastically change things. There is learning losses that occur and not just at the high school but early on like kindergarteners not being able to come together and talk with each other. there is some degree of we have to make up for that when things come back to normal. So if you look after COVID when we return to the to business as usual with these regions exams, you'll see that we have been pretty consistent in terms of our performance. And again, notably our kids perform much

014better than kids do across New York State. And I think another thing to highlight is that if you compare the slopes, it seems that kids on average across New York State have been performing worse, more worse compared to where our kids, our kids have been pretty consistent, stable. The decrease has not been as great as what has been experienced across New York State. Another thing to add to this too which again I mentioned that an issue sometimes with looking at region scores is is the conversion and something that the regions has been or New York State has been trying to do and they've been doing it is that they uh it is more difficult for students to score higher for level fives at mastery. Right? So we're looking here at proficiency as defined by pass

015rate of 65. If I was to include the 55 low pass, that would be a little bit higher. Okay. Oops. So, another thing to think about is what how we think about ourselves. Like this is how kids do here at Guilderland, but how does Guilderland think about itself? And you have to think that Guilderland is a pretty diverse district. urban and west smear to rural and elimat suburbia in pine bush and everything all in between. So we have a wide array of student need. In addition to that um our population is becoming increasingly diverse over time. Right? So one of the things that I did is I wanted to see how we stacked up against comparable districts. So Gillerland's technically classified as a low need to resource capacity district. So looking at how we perform

016now this looks like a lot of um spaghetti but comparable districts within Albany and Saratoga Bethlehem Guilderland North Colony Burnt Hills Miscuit and Vorheesville on the left hand side is the English region's proficiency on the right hand side is graduation rate now you might be asking what's the connection between these two right talking about English but we're talking about graduation situation. English is a required regent exam for all our kids. Sometimes kids can get away with one social studies or one science and they can kind of do some combination, but all kids have to get through English. So if you look on the left hand side, this is this is our proficiency for all students. The middle one is students with disabilities. The bottom one is economically disadvantaged students. The question I like to ask

017myself, you know, I think the measure of a society is how well it best serves its most vulnerable populations, right? And if you look at within the six school districts that are considered low need low need to resource capacity schools, we're right in the middle, right? And it's not bad. We're talking 90 for all students. Now if you shift your attention to the right hand side and we look at the graduation rate again for all students we're in the middle but if you start to now look at students with disabilities and students who are considered economically disadvantaged we are number one of those of the of the six comparable uh school districts. And I'd also say too like if we were to widen the lens and we look at all the schools in Albany, Skenctity,

018Saratoga, we're talking Capitol Region, Boseies, we're talking Questar and Wishy Boseies. Guilderland ranks 2022 second 2023, top fourth, 2024, top 7th, 2025, top fifth. And that's out of a total of 38 schools. So, it's important to know that we are doing a lot of good work to support all of our students and the students who really need it the most. Um, I take pictures every now and again. And that little post-it note was when we were grading regent exams last year and it was for an ENL student. and I'm opening up and I see this little motivational postit from a teacher to a student because we care because we recognize this English exam can be a real big hurdle for a lot of kids and we want to have them be prepared to be successful.

019Now, department work, things that we've done past 10 years. Try not to read directly from this. Some of this stuff might be familiar. You know, I think part of the most important work that we've done has been our co-taught program because we're bringing English and special education teachers together to work collaboratively. We work very deliberate on having common grade level experiences. You know, one of the more notable ones is 9th grade where we look at doing a little bit of social studies in English for September 11th. They read a novel on the topic. They go to the New York State Museum and that's for all students, not not some classes. The department's done a really good job at constantly refreshing and updating our libraries with brand spanking new YA novels. Um again the interdisciplinary focus

020has been really important in not just in English but in social studies. A lot of the changes in social studies have been skill-based. Those skills exist in English and they are very similar. So we work very closely together in the department to have that experience. DEI has been another important aspect of the English program. You know when I said that it's important for kids to feel represented in the curriculum. That's where we worked to make sure that we have books that students can see themselves in there, books that engages our students with hard things that are important. We work with trying to help kids have voice and to be able to facilitate, you know, I'm going to I'm going to refer to civil conversations later, but it's really important where kids have a safe space

021to be able to be heard, to ask questions while they're in a caring, supportive environment. Argumentation has been a huge focus in both English and social studies. And so we've done a lot of work trying to make sure that there's alignment with proper claims, evidence, and reasoning across both departments. We've done work when the common core came out to standardize uh excuse me to prioritize certain power standards and then to use that information to kind of uh articulate important aspects for each grade level. All of that again is was super important with our co-taught classes because we have a range of learners. We need to be able to differentiate instruction. We've worked very closely with close reading and annotation in both departments. Right now, we've been working on trying to develop a common standardsbased rubric

022for each of the grade levels in English and social studies. As I mentioned earlier, uh the arrival of AI and the prevalence of Chromebooks is changing how we are trying to help both teach English and help our students engage with reading and writing and expression. Uh another thing that our teachers have done a really great job through through both the New York State English Council and the Capital District Writers Project is infusing art into English. uh some of that's done through the professional collaboration um and with external groups and both internally. And then this last thing here I just want to highlight because I feel like I often get this like where's the grammar? What what what about the semicolon or the spelling or the syntax? And I will say like that has its place

023in English language arts. It's important but I firmly believe that the department feels that it is more important to emphasize meaning over form. Like if a student is able to express themselves well enough and there might be a rogue error in the syntax or a misspelled word that can be caught in revision. But if if a perfectly written sentence means nothing then what does that get the student right? So, I don't want to diminish the value of grammar, but I wanted to put that in context with what we want our students to be able to uh learn in English class. So, things that we have in our program, we have a lot of college credit aligned courses with AP courses through Skodexity County Community College and Syracuse University. We have a lot of great electives.

024I mentioned civil conversation. We have picture books. We have acting and directing. We have a journalism course that also feeds into the journal which is our student newspaper. Um you might not see him right now but you know Mr. Mayok is the man behind the scenes and we have digital broadcasting news and sports and that allows kids to be able to contribute to the ghs reporter present the news also act um as like uh in the field filmers and correspondents at all sorts of sporting events. Um one of the things again too that that we're trying to do is we're trying to offer more electives. Uh we have two that came out last year. they weren't able to run because it's really hard to get our electives running and I'll explain this in a little

025bit. We have a 21st century English and for the love of reading. So, we're trying to kind of help kids connect with English in a way that's both useful and also is uh fulfilling. Other things that we're able to do here really well in our English program is we work really closely with our librarians. We bring our classes down to the library. the librarians come to the classroom for research, for book talks. We're really proud to have been able to uh bring to the high school and thank you to Miss Anderson for supporting this as we've brought in authors. How often have you read a book and asked yourself, I wonder what he meant. I wonder what she tried to convey. Right? And you don't know without being able to actually ask the person who

026authored the text. So, we've been able to bring in Brandon Keelley, Wendy Mills, Joseph Bershack, Gay Pollser, just it's a it's an amazing opportunity that uh you know, we're very grateful to have those authors come in and actually work with our students. This past fall, Wendy Mills went to the New York State Museum with students and did a workshop with students afterward with her book, All We Have Left. We also have our kids take advantage of real life publishing. A lot of our teachers have our kids submit their work into essay contests through the New York Times, local organizations, uh, for scholarships. And you'd be surprised at how much how much prizes are kids worth? I don't want to say like, oh, they're making a lot of money, but that for a student, it might

027be one thing to have your parent say, hey, that sounds really good. I think this reads really well. Or your teacher like, that's really good. But then to actually put it out into the real world and have people externally say, "This is amazing. First place, $500." That is another realworld way to reflect the success of our English program. Um, other things that we have our kids do, you know, in our English classes, you know, we think about focusing on helping our kids to to think about the role of audience. In our English classes, we have our kids write to veterans, uh, individuals in nursing homes, children in a hospital. You know, it's not sort of like, hey, I hope you feel better, but like, all right, this is a young child. H, how would you

028need to change your words for them to understand and feel what you want to express? Again, the emphasis is on meaning, right? Uh we have the Dodge Poetry Festival which we try to select some kids based on their their love of poetry and their aptitude from year to year to go down state to participate in that really excellent uh event. We have a lot of similar clubs. So again I mentioned civil conversation. The course actually came from the club but we still have that club. We have a Shakespeare club. We also have like I said the journal which runs the school newspaper. So things to think of in the future, right? So there's going to be some changes coming up potentially to, you know, graduation requirements for our students and we want to be on

029the front end. We don't want to kind of be notified the day before we have to go live like we got to do this. We're trying to think ahead. We're trying to be flexible. We're trying to build capacity. Again, digital technology is a really hard thing because we as educators are trying to learn how to use that to advance our own instruction. We're also trying to help our kids use it to advance their own learning. And there's this fine line between, you know, if you're going to write something, you're going to put a resume, uh, cover letter together, I would expect a student to take advantage of Grammarly. I would expect a student to take advantage of AI because it's putting polish. So, we're trying to help students to understand when to and when not

030to use these tools. So, when it's for learning, we want their raw naked work so we can provide feedback, but at the same time, we don't want to keep the technology at arms length because it will be used. They should be using it at some point in the future. Um I mentioned our all of our electives and programming. It is very difficult to provide a lot of different electives because when you have many different electives each of them are likely to be singletons and what that makes them vulnerable to being collapsed because there's not enough students. So, one of the things that is important to know that there is a minor cost to having a wide variety of electives to to provide a little bit of something for everyone. Um, we are working to the

031best that we can to try to have English not just be in English but everywhere. Like we recognize if you're in science and you're doing research there, well, the writing and thinking and the presentation skills are going to be there. It's there in social studies. to where we can try to build outward out of English to help students everywhere. That is a as a a long range goal. Student stamina is huge. Students struggle to spend enough time reading and writing. I think a little bit of it is like COVID. A little bit of it is the technology and social media where everyone just wants instant gratification. And it's a time inensive task. We try to spend a lot of time in the classroom to help them. We also hope that kids do that at home,

032but we recognize that that's not a guarantee. And I think too the, you know, at the end of this, it's not just about skill building, but it's also, you know, English is something fulfilling. And I'm going to show you this at the end that at the end of the day, like a kid wants to pick up a book because they choose to. They want to sit down and put their thoughts on a piece of paper because it's helpful for them or they want to say something to someone else and that's the medium that they choose to do, not because they're compelled to do so. So, what is English and what does learning look like? Right? Again, English isn't just about if you close your eyes, you probably think again a book, an essay, spelling and

033punctuation. So, I'm sharing with you some photos that come from uh Mr. Missouri in 10th grade English and I'll kind of briefly touch upon it. He runs a uh public speaking class. It's a college credit course. And what he had kids do was to speak about things that they love to inspire. So they would speak on it and then they would participate. The goal is to build community but at the same time build confidence in that communication. Another thing that he was involved in again I mentioned art. So infusing that art into English. Um again student work I said that uh you know we do a lot of interdisciplinary work. We have an aligned program and then we have the normal amount of interdisciplinary emphasis that we have in all of our English and social

034studies classes. And so I was just kind of calling through work from last year and again I think this is a great example of the value of meaning over form. Is there some punctuation errors? Is there some syntax errors? Yes, but it's unfair. The 14th amendment is broken. The color of a the color of skin, but what does it matter? Black or white? Why does the education change when the pigment is darker? What difference can it make? What education? What can education give to kids? A little darker than another? Why must the education be different? Because of exterior features. In the end, we're all human inside. Right? So again, I think you can clearly see the meaning is there, the processing is there. And I'll close with just a couple other student work samples here.

035One thing that I did not touch upon that is really important affecting our kids is social emotional learning. Like kids have kids are grappling with a lot of mental health issues. And so another thing that is so useful for English is processing, reflection, and expression. You know, um just at the bottom here, like this is again an 11th grade class. They do this thing. I believe I believe growth comes from what you do when nothing is guaranteed. I believe that kindness is the most powerful force in the universe. I believe you should know your friends as well as you know yourself, if not more. I believe not everything makes sense right away. I believe new experiences are the most important times of life. So these I think are very powerful learning experiences and again I

036highlight we do work on spelling, we do work on capitalization, the use of the apostrophe and comma, but we put our emphasis on being able to look at text whether on paper on a screen and understand the meaning there. We put the emphasis on creation of meaning whether written, typed, spoken, or even acted out. Um, and I'll one more. One more. So, this is me being silly. It's so important to smell and stop and smell the roses in my craziness to want to try to capture all of these wonderful things in the department. I consider myself to be pretty aware and present. And as I was going around getting pictures, can I take a picture of your classroom? I came across this cork bulletin board right outside of a teacher's classroom and I just stopped

037and I started reading these little pieces of poetry and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this has been there for months and I haven't noticed it." So this is I spoke to the student today. Her name is Aaron Tinen and she says, "Today I feel like a grassy field. Sometimes I am freshly cut, ready for a game. Sometimes I'm overgrown, feeling like hay, but always I am capable of being played on." I asked the world, "Does the shade of green really matter?" And the answer is no. I am always a grassy field. So to me, I know that represents who that student is. But I also feel what she's expressing also represents what Gilderland is. Does anyone have any questions? >> You know, a shining star in Guilderland. So, thank you so much for that. I

038loved your um graphs on particularly um referencing the more vulnerable students. That was amazing. Um, I just had a a kind of a general question last year. I'm sure you probably read that um I think it was in the Atlantic that uh college students aren't having as much ability as they did, you know, a decade ago to read books in great volume because they're more used to reading snippets in um primary education. What are your thoughts on that? And how can we build stamina while also emphasizing reading the entire text? >> Well, I think my teachers would concur with that sentiment. I can say that over time uh many like sometimes there's the class book the class novel but when you're trying to adapt and meet students where there are they you are accurate like

039they are looking for shorter segments smaller pieces short stories and that is to capitalize on their endurance and stamina. I think what can be done is to just provide the time to practice, provide the time to hopefully expose students to a wide array of texts so that they find something that they really enjoy. I was at the middle school earlier today doing an honors performance test thing. a student was done and when they're done they're just kind of waiting down the clock and this girl had a book thicker than an encyclopedia and that like awesome like what we can I think the best thing to do is encourage any kind of reading it could be a comic book it could be a news article it could be a popular mechanics magazine it could be classical

040stuff it could be a YA could be all different genres I'd even say even reading blog posts online that because that requires the eyes to go over the words and sentences and to process that. So I think where we can kind of hook student attention authentically that is the best chance to help them carry on because again at the end of the day when students are engaging people in the real world we hope that they are thinking critically they're thinking about audience they're thinking about perspective they're thinking about you know what is the evidence and reasoning that is presented towards me and what I'm processing without giving them the direction of like hey who what is the purpose of this paper. We hope that those things can be developed so that they become an automatic

041thing when they leave here and if not learning is lifelong process. >> Yeah, I I concur. It's fabulous presentation and incredible um faculty. Um I see that the AI for digital technology piece um that you have listed as looking ahead and I'm curious as to what extent um the department has had to address that um both from an education standpoint but also from a realization that um how do we make it not problematic and be realistic about it and also not let it become a crutch that a lot of our students are grabbing towards um because that definitely seems to be the direction. Um I like I said, I think it's good that it's being embraced because it's it's real. Um or not. If it's AI, it's the opposite of real. Um it's a it's

042a reality. Better choice. Um and that um how do we help our students to use it effectively and acknowledge the fact that it's there? >> Sure. So I'll just use a math comparison. Um, there's a graphing calculator, but the graphing calculator does not have value in so far as the students do not understand the equations that it's helping them to quickly speed and process through. The graphing calculator does not help the student if the student is not capable of checking the graphing calculator's output. So I say the comparable thing is that things like as simple as a spell check, the squiggly blue and red lines that are in Google Docs, that is a system of stuff. And it's not wrong for kids to use it, but then at its maximum, we're talking about chat GPT.

043Can you provide me a well-reasoned essay on X? So there's two things. Well, we can't deal with this. We're going to go back to pen and paper. And that relieves us of that problem. But that's irresponsible because the way the future is going to be is like kids have to be able to adequately engage in that medium. At the same token, you can't go full boore into just the digital medium because there's some tactile learning has value. And what we're able to do is that when we have some ondemand written things, we also have a baseline to compare. I think the most important thing, and I'm I'm glad you bring this up because I kind of forgot to expand on this, is that um plagiarism is a real problem right now. And the best traditional

044ways is that when teachers know their students and they know their voice, their quirks, their styles, what they typically express, and when something comes deviates that out of the norm, that's usually, hey, well, wait a minute. Like that you don't normally speak like that. You don't normally write like that and that opens up the conversation to look into it further. I think the challenging thing with AI is that our teachers are struggling to catch students because we need really effective efficient tools to assist with that process. So I can tell you one of the things that we've been doing in the department. It's become department policy that all digital work is done in a Google document because it allows us to review a revision history. It protects student work. So it shows like hey this

045is my work. You can see it kind of like in a nice little overtime. This is all of the stuff that has been created. It also allows us to see what we call like the big copy paste like five pages done in a span of 30 seconds or block cut and paste. That allows us. not always a guarantee because sometimes this has happened like oh a student does not have their Chromebook but they want to work on it so they're working on it on their phone right um what students are getting more adept at doing is copying directly from another screen so I'm not saying the cut and paste but they're transcribing so on one device they'll put in a prompt ask chat GPT a question it'll spit out and Then they are transcribing transcribing

046it. So then when you look at the revision history, it flows normally. So our teachers are using AI detection tools that we have that's available and they're not always 100% accurate. They give you probabilities likely created by AI. But I think that combined with how well we know students is our best effort to try to intervene in the moment. I have a teacher who went the extra step because this student is really really adept, reached out to our technology crew. Hey, student made this paper at this time. They the revision history shows that they are typing it out. AI detector shows that it's likely created by AI. Can you take a look at the searches? And they look at the search. How to ask AI a question? So like we're trying to deter, we're trying

047to intervene, we're trying to make this a teachable moment, but as you can imagine, trying to do that for every student is very time inensive. So long- winded way that AI has a use for to help facilitate instruction. AI has a use to facilitate learning and AI has a place beyond learning as an enhancement. And we're trying to get kids to understand that for learning, this has got to be you, but in the real world, it's an enhancement that you should feel free to use and to empower their own learning. >> And I just want to say one more point as a as a parent, the the the educators that my children have had have motivated them. And I feel like that's a key piece here that I've seen that like some of the stuff

048you're showing is that they they've found a way to tap into the interest that the kids have to make them more inclined to have it genuine because so much of this go-to easy solution um you know is is is removed when they feel that connection. So to the credit of your teachers, they feel like they do a good job with that too. >> I kind of want to add on to that. I my question is really centered on when you have those conversations with students and frame it from this standpoint of these are skills you need to build in order to be able to use this tool effectively. Are they responsive and do they understand for the most part or are you seeing they're still just like you know one track I just want to

049get it done. I just want to use this utilize this tool so I don't have to learn. It's hard to say. I can say based on when a student commits plagiarism and they come my way 99% of the time, it's never because I really want to cheat. My goal is to cheat. It's always because they ran out of time. They needed to get it done. They didn't know what to do. And the easy out was this. I will say too on the other end, we have some of our brightest students in AP who are so grade pointed that they're leaning heavily into AI because they're looking for the perfect paper. One of my English teachers yesterday said that I'm getting tired of reading doctoral dissertations, noting that kids are really using AI when they shouldn't

050be and missing the point that most important thing is their voice, their writing, not the right answer, the best answer. And again, teachers are struggling with trying to tease out what's real, what's enhanced. It's a struggle. I also wanted to just say thank you. This was very informative and just comment that I personally took a singleton class in high school and it was a science research class where one of the requirements was to write a grant and I was 17 years old. I was awarded that grant and it changed the course of my life. I still write grants today 25 years later and I don't know that I would have done that if I had not taken that class. So, thank you for all you do and thank you to all those teachers who teach

051those single classes. I think they're life-changing. I just would I think there's one more question. I just want to the the most important the secret sauce in the department is the teachers. Their experiences in their classrooms with their peers with their affiliations to like universities and local groups is really the synergy that drives all of this forward. Rarely have we had the need like oh we need to find an external person to come in and tell us what to do. I think the most important thing just to be mindful of the most precious commodity is time. If we had more time for people to work together, not just in English, but with special education, our partners as co-teers, social studies, and the other disciplines, we can move mountains. But absent time, we are doing the

052best that we can with the knowledge base and motivation and heart that we have. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> While you're closing up, I'll just say um you know from my own experience, my children have considered um their English classes to be a safe space which I've been very appreciative of and um in particular when they were writing their college essays. Some of those are very very personal. So it's it's been wonderful. Andrew, I was just going to announce you. >> Rock and roll. >> Take it away, Andrew. Excellent. Good evening. Uh, I want to start our 2026 27 budget development officially tonight. Um and the first thing we're going to do is review uh our current year budget. So what we went through last year with the 202526 budget and then I'll present

053the rollover budget which is our even before our first draft our preirst draft of the um next year's budget. So looking at where we were at this time last year, we knew the key issues were going to be or key questions. uh what would happen with foundation aid, right? So, two summers ago, we had the Rockefeller Institute doing that large-scale study of foundation aid, which is the largest uh unalloc undesated uh formula that the state uses to drive aid to school districts. We didn't know what would happen. Uh internally, we had declining kindergarten enrollment, which was a multi-year trend. So we knew that we would see fewer sections at elementary level and know that this would percolate up through the grades over time. Uh we were still facing significant inflation which was affecting uh purchasing.

054Also our uh internal salaries and negotiations prescript prescription drug insurance costs uh grew every month. Every time we got a report, we were spending more on prescription drugs, largely driven by uh no restrictions on GLP-1 access, but not only limited to that. And finally, we had finished off the round of tax certiary payments or refunds because of challenges with the crossgate settlement the prior year. Uh but we had to borrow for that and we knew that that payment would not be excludable from the tax cap. that would have that would eat up some of our uh budget, our ability, our revenue growth and our ability to meet the budget. So, this is last year's um the previous year's budget, our rollover budget, and then the final adopted budget for expenses. Um, and I just wanted

055to not going to go through all this again because we went through it and we settled on the or we we developed the final budget, but just show that between the rollover budget and the adopted budget, we reduced spending by $2.7 million and that's really million dollars. And then our revenue budget, our revenue budget also increased. Uh but the biggest driver there was um we had held foundation aid flat in our initial projections because there was strong uncertainty would happen. There was discussion of ending so hold harmless. We really didn't know and we ended up getting a a fairly decent foundation aid increase that uh benefited us. This isn't really reflected in the state aid revenue because along with cutting contract transportation spending, we cut forecasted uh transportation aid. Um but we had a real

056gain there. And that that $376,000 gap line that was the amount of fund balance and reserves used in the final budget. So those changes, you know, we had uh breakage and attrition and retirements. This is something that we don't include in the rollover budget. The rollover budget just says this year staff to next year staff. Uh we also reduced open positions, you know, across the district and across departments or or uh I um units. We we had a reduction to supply codes which yields modest savings but does have an impact on what what our schools are able to do. As I said, we reduced contract transportation. Um we reduced debt service and the final projections which was offset by reduced state aid. Uh and finally there was that increase in foundation aid. That's the backdrop

057to this year. So just want to set the context for it's very common not just our district but other districts to have the gap uh in the rollover budget. So we hold staffing and programs constant. We just say if we do this next year what will it cost? Uh but we also use known data. So we may have in this case some preliminary health insurance projection data. We don't have final numbers yet but we know that it will be a significant impact. Uh and we also look at what are historical trends for equipment, supplies, salaries, all of all of those different components of the budget. So this slide has our rollover budget for both expenditures or spending and revenue. So the revenue projections are significant. um 5.3%. This is really driven by the increase in

058benefits in our current budget. So in 2526, health insurance alone takes up 18% of our overall budget. If we went back in time 10 years and said that was going to be happening, it would stagger everyone. Next year or in future years, we're going to be crossing the 20% threshold. Health insurance continues to rise. It's not a Guilderland unique problem. If you watch news reports, uh health insurance costs are a very frequent uh topic of conversation or coverage. So, this is an issue that is affecting uh public and private enterprises uh across the country and across the state. Other drivers we see, you know, increases in uh instructional and support salaries. These are driven these are contractuals. They're obligations. The district has taken on you know projected modest increases in equipment and supplies and contractual

059services. Uh Bosei services key there is you know we get aid on Boseie services. So when we shift expenditures to Boseies we receive uh the majority of that money back in aid the following year. Uh for revenue again we're projecting moderate increases in uh state aid. Uh so leaving us with a 3.7 million or 3 uh three million $3.7 million gap between expenses and revenues. So what does this actually mean for us at this point? Right now this year's budget experience looks similar to last year's budget experience. So where we are in the where we are starting the the process is where we similar to where we were last year. And again, we have those big uncertainties. We don't know what's going to happen with state aid. Um, so this is our summary table comparing

060last year and this year. The gap is slightly larger, but in reality, we're looking at, you know, we closed the $3.1 million uh gap last year. Again, we didn't fully close it. We budgeted um fund balance and reserves. Next board meeting we will have a much more in-depth disc discussion of fund balance and reserves. What drove this? You know I mentioned the benefits. It is notable that in the projection the increase in benefits dollar-wise is larger than the increase in salary. My guess and this I feel pretty confident in this being accurate is that this district has never encountered this before. Doesn't mean we won't encounter it in the future. doesn't also mean that, you know, the final budget things may play out differently, but just that having benefit increases on this scale is tremendously

061impactful. Uh we don't have our final tax cap or preliminary tax cap uh developed yet because with the capital project uh cash flow projections needed, we're delayed with our financial adviser, but we'll have that in the next few weeks and be able to share that at the next board meeting. Uh and again, we're projecting a modest increase in state aid. Our next step, we anticipate the governor releasing her budget next week. We'll be looking carefully at that to see not just are there obligations being added to school districts, are there new mandates, but also what is her proposal for state aid? Internally, we'll be releasing our thought exchange shortly to get feedback from the public on budget priorities. Uh at the next board meeting, I'll share uh the tax cap, the vehicle purchase proposition, and

062as I mentioned, we'll talk about fund balance and reserves, uh our strategy, and our history. This is all leading up to less than two months from now when uh when Dan and I will be sharing the draft budget for 2627. From that draft budget, we will be working uh with the board, with the public uh on refining it, getting information. Hopefully, we might have a final budget before a final state budget before we have to adopt a budget. That one I would not if if I was making confident projections on other things. That one I'm not making a confident projection on. Just uh but it would be great. And then May 19th will be our budget vote. Any questions or comments on the rollover budget or the the framework to beginning this year's budget process

063>> or um >> people's I don't know like I it just >> it's it's the reverse of last year. So last year we saw modest increases in medical insurance, >> right? >> And huge increases in prescription drug insurance. >> Yeah. >> This year we don't have our prescription drug numbers yet, but the utilization >> they're not going to be it's not going to be a significant increase. Medical on the other hand >> will be high teens likely. >> Wow. >> Which is >> okay. >> Significant. >> Do you think that reflect is reflective of the federal situation? >> It is. It's reflective of our utilization because we're self-insured. Um, so we pull, we're part of a consortium. We pull our medical, we're we are fully self-insured for prescription drug. And so across the pool utilization

064has been growing significantly. um do we from a percentage standpoint um I know that insurance is able to be increased based on age groups. If we had a large portion of our staff base retire in a given year, would that make a difference in our consortium's costs if we hired in? >> From what I understand, and again, not not from what I understand about how how our process works is they look at our our five-year utilization, okay, in setting the rates. They don't look at >> would make no difference whatsoever. So well it would show up maybe if that happens over the next 5 years 10 years from now we may be seeing >> got it >> uh impacts from that >> just like the hope with the growth in GLP1 usage is that we

065will see decreased medical costs down the line if we have long-term employees stay stay with us and those drugs are effective at pres preventing a lot of significant and often expensive medical U needs needs that may yield some savings or reduces the growth in in those uh categories. >> No other questions. >> Just GLP1s will probably continue to get cheaper as well, right? I mean, they're being mass-produced now. Their pat the patent is up. So you know alternatives have flooded the market. So will that make a difference in the coming years right? It's >> that I can't I mean I can say right now I look closely at our utilization our our utilization um grew. It actually did not. The last two months of the last fiscal year or last school year, which is the

066two months before we put in relatively modest restrictions, we did not see an increase in utilization, which I thought might happen because we were very clear in communicating that these are coming because we were implementing all these changes. We were communicating to our members. Um so potentially our districts our employees and and health and other insured uh members demand for those has has been satisfied and plateaued. But again things also can change. >> Okay. Thank you. >> But you're saying this year's budget isn't really about it's about prescription drugs as much as overall utilization. Thank you. >> Okay, we'll move on to the consent items. Um, can I get a motion to approve the uh consent items A through D? Meredith. Second, Katie. Any questions or comments? All those in favor? >> I. Okay, unanimous.

067And then we will move on to Rachel. >> Good evening. I have two items for you this evening. First, um, an accolade. I'm pleased to recognize an outstanding professional achievement by one of our own high school teachers. Physical education teacher and coach Allison Reier has been named the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance Professional of the Year. This prestigious award honors educators who demonstrate exceptional leadership, service, and long-term contributions to health and physical education along with a sustained commitment to the state professional organization. Allison has served the Guilderland Central School District for more than two decades and is widely respected by her peers and uh colleagues for her leadership, particularly in unified sports, where she builds community, celebrates inclusion, and creates meaningful opportunities for all students. She's driven by a

068constant desire to grow and improve, and her impact extends far beyond the gymnasium. We are incredibly proud of Allison and feel fortunate to have her as part of our school community. And if you see Allison, please give her a big congratulations. Yeah, that's great. And second, I have a textbook that was submitted um for your review two meetings ago and is now submitted for approval. It is the graphic novel adaptation of Refugee by Alan Gratz. Uh illustrations in the graphic novel by Sid Finny. and it's for use in grades uh seven and up mostly grades seven and eight and for ELA and social studies. >> Okay, so we vote right. So can I get a motion to approve the book? Tara second. Kelly, any questions or comments? All those in favor? >> I unanimous. >>

069Thank you. >> Back to you, Andrew. >> Uh thank you, Mud. Thank you very much. I have several items for your consideration tonight. Uh the first is a general fund transfer. >> Okay. Can I get a motion to approve? I thought there was more. Sorry. Can I get a motion to approve the general funds transfer? Um Kim second. Rebecca, any questions or comments? All those in favor? >> Okay. Unanimous. >> Thank you. My next item is appointing an audit two actual audit me two members to the audit committee. We had uh two seats open. I want to first recognize uh John Franco Santiello who is a longtime member of the committee who recently resigned. Uh we also had Skyler Ryan who was not with the committee as long but provided fantastic service also not donated

070a piano to the district. Um they both resigned. So we the audit committee interviewed a number of outstanding candidates uh but voted to recommend Gretchen and Gunther Collins and Christopher Mislin. >> Okay, thank you. Um so can I get a motion to appoint the two members to the audit committee? Peter second Meredith. Any questions or comments? All those in favor? Unanimous. >> Okay. My next item is a shared service agreement with Scotia Glennville Central School District for the transportation of students. >> Okay. Okay. Can I get a motion to um accept the service agreements? Katie second terra. Any questions or comments? All those in favor? Unanimous. >> Thank you. My next item are service agreements for uh speech, language, um adaptive technology, and other supports for our students. >> Okay. Can I get a motion?

071Nina. Second. Kelly. Any questions or comments? Um okay. All those in favor? Unanimous. >> Thank you. My next item is an emergency transport transportation contract with Raja Group LLC. >> Okay. Um, can I get a motion to approve the emergency contract? Rebecca second. Katie, any questions or comments? All those in favor? Passes 90. >> Thank you. My next item is the awardment of uh contract to RLS demographics who for a demographic enrollment projection study. >> Uh can I get a motion to accept see Nina second? Kelly any questions or comments? >> I have a question. >> Yeah. >> Um is that something we do every year? I haven't seen this on the agenda before. >> We have not done this for 10 years. We do I do internal projections each year. Uh but we are

072required to have an outside consultant do enrollment projections as part of our submission of a capital project. Um and we because the it's been more than 10 years since we had someone do them. We don't have current projections. So this is a requirement for the capital project submission because we're doing an addition at the high school. So SED needs that in order for us to receive building aid. Uh but this is also as I've talked about declining enrollment a lot of last few years. I am not actually a demographer. Uh so it's I'm uh very excited about the opportunity of having a demographer look at not just the birth data that I look at but do a more systematic overview of our districts birth and death data and real estate development sales all of all

073of more complex factors to help us understand what scenarios may come over the next 10 years because the if we do see these actual enrollment declines that will impact future budgets and future operational years. Um, part of this RFP was a public presentation. So, um, uh, Bob, who's the dem who's the the guy doing our study, I will come to a board meeting at a date to be determined later this school year, uh, to share his projections. >> That's great. Useful. >> Great. All those in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. My last item is uh a donation from Beth Lacy who made a monetary donation to our K9 program. >> Wonderful. Uh can I get a motion to accept Nina second Kelly? Any questions or comments? All those in favor? Unanimous. Thank you for the donation.

074Okay. Antim board president action. Um, so we are going to vote on these tonight, I believe. Okay, so one through 10. Um, we received these last time or the time before? I can't remember. But, um, so are there Can I get a motion to approve these? First of all, Peter, the fruits of our labor, Peter. Very good. Okay. Um, second, Rebecca, any questions or comments on any of them? Okay. All those in favor. >> Passes 9 zero. Thank you. Board committee reports. Can we start with audit? >> We we met today for three and a half minutes. >> We had interviews last week. Um we're really grateful for the community outreach. Um we had excellent candidates. Um and we don't have any pending meetings. >> Okay. Thank you. business practices. >> Uh we're meeting on

075January 30th. >> Okay. Thank you. Communications. >> We met today. We went over the results of the climate and culture survey. And I'd like to thank the teachers, families, and students that participated. The information will be shared out um coming up. And then we also reviewed the questions that will be coming out on the thought exchange for the budget. We are, as we've heard from Andrew, officially in the budget season. So, there'll be a um thought exchange that will be coming out and we are looking again for input from the community on priorities as we are building the budget and information. Um so, please if the community could again participate in that, we would welcome the feedback and we will meet again on February 10th. >> Great. Thank you. Um DEI we meet >> we

076tomorrow >> tomorrow. Yeah. >> Okay. >> policy committee will plan a meeting for February. >> Okay. Thank you. Are there any other public comments? >> No. >> Okay. Let me just check my email real quick. Uh nope. Um, okay. Now, we are going to the Wild West, but I would like to actually go back to the student report out because, um, though our students were not able to be here, they did send them to me. So, uh, first quarter 2 ends next Friday, January 23rd. The end of the second quarter marks the end of the semester as well, meaning we are halfway through the year. Many people's schedules change at this point in the year as some classes are only one semester long. Students should check their schedules to make sure they are aware of

077any classes that might be changing for next semester. And students should also be checking their grade book on e school data to make sure they have submitted all of their work. Um, also next week is January regions week. Students who signed up earlier in the year to take a January regions exam will be taking their exam next week. Mr. Piscatelli sent out the exam schedule via um student square last week and the schedule is as follows. Um January 20th morning ELA, afternoon life sciences biology, living environment and chemistry. The 21st is geometry, US history and government and algebra 1 in physics. January 22nd is global history and algebra 2. January 23rd is earth science and space earth and space science. Sorry. Students who are not taking the exam will follow a normal class schedule on

078Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday and Friday have been shortened to half days. Blocks will be 48 minutes and dismissal will be at 11:01. There will be an extracurricular performing um sorry an extracurricular performing ensembles concert tomorrow night. I will be there. um at 7 pm in the high school auditorium. The concert will feature the chamber choir, chamber strings, stage band, and the jazz ensemble. All are welcome. Finally, the annual pops concert will be held on Saturday, February 7th, and this year's theme is Pops goes to the movies. Um, so that should be a lot of fun and I hope folks will attend. Thank you Parth and Ryan for those updates. And now we return to the Wild West. Is there any uh board ideas, sharing issues, etc. I always have some, but I try to go

079last, I think. >> Okay. All right. Um, so, um, thank you to Dr. Cancel for his uh presentation and in general um I would say that it's very helpful to us as a board to continue to learn about what is going on from the um perspective of the teachers. So today, even though I graduated in 96 and I've been a parent for a while here, I did learn something um this evening. And so, um, I wonder how the board would feel, and I have already discussed it with Katie and Dan, about affording the GTA, um, and teachers an opportunity soon to come out and perhaps let us know about some of the highlights of the past year, especially as we go into budget season. Um, I was thinking it might be good to just sort

080of get a refresher or here's some things we may not know about. So, um I feel pretty strongly that I'd like to do that. Is there any are there any other >> Katie? Do you have anything you want to say? First of all, >> no, I think it would be great to hear from them. I know that the um our teachers in the GTA are doing a lot of social justice work and work for the community and it would be nice to give them an opportunity to also share out the work they're doing um to support the community outside of the school. Right. >> And it would be great for our listeners at home also, I think. Um Rachel, any thoughts on this? I'm trying to read your face. >> No, I mean we have

081periodic program reports that highlight work of our departments and our teachers. Um but we can >> I was thinking more of um something more hor holistic or or highlights that kind of go across the board, but um you know the idea is pretty abstract at this point. So um anybody opposed or have concerns or not on board? Go ahead. Go ahead. Nina was describing hers first. >> Oh, sorry. I talked a lot. You can go ahead. >> Oh, it'll look good. Um, no. The only question I have, it's not a concern, is how would this what would this look like? like would it just be would we be taking teachers that teach a specific grade or from a specific school and highlighting at a certain meeting or so again abstract just an idea but I

082was thinking um I would reach out to GTA and and sort of have them come back to us with an idea of what they propose. Um I would like to learn about other schools to be honest with you. I don't have a lot of contact with Lynwood or GES and so I was thinking something holistic like an overview highlights across the board but again open to ideas feedback. Go ahead Peter. I'm trying to read your face too. >> My face says this is a very large topic and and I'm glad Kim asked like what does it look like because that's where I'm at right now. I I >> Well, we've never done >> we want to hear right we've never done this, right? So, >> the idea that I'm hearing is we need we need

083a more comprehensive overview from from the GTA. Is that accurate? >> So, we've had overviews, right, from the budgetary standpoint? But I'm thinking something more like this with highlights for the year, new things that we've started doing that we may not know about or that things that we initiated and um we can get a report on how they've gone so far. even the yonder pouches to some extent or how the >> the cell phone policy has impacted the classroom experience, things like that. But again, I would leave it to um Emily Mu to let us to to talk about it with folks and then get back to us. She may not like the idea, you know, the teachers may not like the idea, but I would really like to offer that. I don't know if

084this is what you're referring to, but um just knowing of what I know about other districts and how they're moving towards the pathways and I don't want to jump the gun on here on like the conversation for goal setting, but like for me, I think restructuring how we do some of our curricular catalog might be helpful in following those new um like those new themes that um I know specifically like South Colony I'm familiar with because I teach there. They do have like a pathways set up in their curriculum a little bit. Um so what I'm hearing from what could be a benefit from that when you say highlights I think also um for me what I found the most interesting of the presentation today was the electives and the way of kind of finding

085ways to tap into the interest of our kids. So, um by finding um different courses or electives that students are taking as we are going to be streamlining those pathways and figuring out how we're going to be restructuring or following suit with the portion of a graduate um the the GTA or teachers or you know faculty might be able to weigh in on some of the different types of electives that students are gravitating towards that can help structure those themes. I don't know if that's something that you're referring to, but that's kind of how I'm thinking that as we move in that direction, what what do we want that to look like? So, um, kind of collecting different ideas from that. >> I understand what you're saying and that and I think that that's action

086as teachers are going along and they're working with Rachel and and then that information is presented to us. But more I think it was just more to give um the teachers an opportunity like an example not to but sometimes that you know they've they've hold they held events to get um books into famil family's homes from you know the teachers uh held an event and students receive free books you know all they could come and different things that they're doing that way. So for more of a like an overview perspective that way of the work that the teachers doing and some of the GTA. But what but what you're saying is more like our goal setting and and a deeper conversation and and work as as they're working on um >> graduation requirements. I I

087would assume that that was something that would more come from Rachel or different department heads, but just more to give them an opportunity. It's just more of a shared opportunity to welcome them to more than necessarily answering to us about the >> specific curriculum because that's done. >> Is this are you and again I know that you're going to give it to the GTA and ask them, but is this going to be similar to like what the teacher reps do at the PTA meetings where they go over like what the teachers are doing and the different programs? probably a good way to describe >> it. It sounds like PTA 2.0 where they're going to just come and actually because last night I mean I can give an example and I hope she does. I don't

088think she's going to get mad. She's not gonna >> Sorry, Lisa. Um, no. Last night at the Farnsworth meeting, Lisa Ball was talking about um a connections that the students created a new club where it's making connections with students who maybe don't have other um have close connections with with students, but that's the type of stuff that they'll go over. So, I'm kind of picturing that, but just presented to all of us. >> Yeah, that makes sense. >> That's Thank you. I finally got a visual. Thank you. >> That's what I'm Yeah. Okay, great. Okay, that's all I really is. Anybody else? Okay, thank you everyone and thank you to um our tech belly student that came out. >> Yes, thank you so much. >> Have a good night. >> Oh, wait. I'm sorry. My

089bad. Can I get a motion to end the belly second? Look at Peter. He's turning red. >> Or we'll be here forever. Okay. All those in favor zero.