001good evening and welcome to the December 6 2022 Gilman School District Board of Education meeting would you all please silence your cell phones and stand for the pledge United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay first on the agenda tonight we have public comment we have one public comment here in person um Sarah Kate Cantor if you could just go up to the mic please thanks I have participated in several thought exchanges with a growing sense of dismay the most recent thought exchange seemed to me to be both unkind and unhelpful overall and I was concerned about the message messages that communicates to District families I'm going to read one of the posts from the thought exchange one parent
002posted quote money is tight for our family and we are just above the poverty line it was immensely helpful to be able to get free lunch for my children money is tight and I work two jobs and go to school and my husband does the same there's no programs to assist when you're just above the poverty line this particular thought Exchange closed on November 23rd and this post was rated at that time in the bottom half of the posts this post got a lot of one and two ratings I'd like the administration to think about the message that is being sent to our students and families with these ratings on this post and other similar ones how do these low ratings make our food insecure families feel these posts are from hard-working families asking for
003just a little bit of help so that their children don't go hungry if I had posted one of those comments in a time of need and then saw what all of the low votes my family and I would be absolutely crushed there were other posts that discussed human rights and safety for students such as the post that said quote updating teachers and staff on gender affirming statements and having a curriculum medicine students unquote this post was one of the lowest rated posts on the thought exchange with the majority of the votes that it received giving it a one or two then there is the post I made which said the quote the Dei committee is doing an amazing job more Dei work to support students is critical unquote most of my ratings were won how
004did these low ratings make students and families feel especially given the other things that have been going on in the district lately there were also concerning posts that received lots of high scores posts that talked about things like taking away the Dei committee or taking Dei out of the curriculum I now want to discuss how the thought exchange does not effectively gather representative advice for the district the highest number of ratings that any of the posts received in this thought exchange was around 120 ratings this was an alarmingly low number of ratings especially since it's not necessarily 120 different people for example someone could open up 100 tabs in Google incognito and vote a hundred times obviously not fair or Equitable the thought exchange is not an equitable way to reach all district stakeholders even
005if we were to look at the total number of posts from The Sod exchange 482 that number is too small to represent the whole district and it's possible that a number of the posts came from only a few people who posted numerous times clearly the majority of the district stakeholders didn't participate in the thought exchange and so any conclusions that the administration draws from the thought exchange will not be representative I am asking the district to look at other ways of reaching out to stakeholders ways that successfully and respectfully gather a much larger and representative number of opinions and suggestions thank you right under the timer thank you Miss Cantor Linda do we have any more public comments I think later in the agenda we're going to be talking about the thought exchange results that
006have come out under superintendent info so I think it makes sense to maybe talk about it there I know um we've briefly talked about thought exchange before and it's just one instrument in the danger of using one instrument to rely on that data like Ms Cantor pointed out and so I think maybe if people have questions or comments about thought exchange we could talk about it when Dr Wiles does her update with the results and we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is the 23-24 budget development and first we have the rollover budget and that will turn it over to Neil sadly maybe the last time thank you Dr Rivera tonight's the kickoff for the 2023-24 budget process we always start at this time of year with a rollover budget projection
007so I'm going to walk through that and explain how we derive some of the information on the rollover budget and kind of show you where we think we stand early on in the process so what is a rollover budget first of all it assumes All Staffing and programs remain constant so we've not made any judgments about programs that may be added or may go away or staff that may not be coming back so all of we're planning on having all of our staffing and programs remain intact for next year as a first step also revenue and expenses are projected using known data so that's what we have access to or that which can be reasonably predicted giving information illustrate some of those as we go through through the presentation and then finally we also use
008trending of historical data or information from outside entities and New York state would be a perfect example of that who has a lot of information that impacts their budget and that allows us to provide a basis for determining our estimates so we have a number of key factors related to the rollover budget the first is our New York State Foundation Aid funding commitment so as you know schools in New York state were underfunded according to the foundation Aid formula or per pupil allocation for many many years that was finally corrected and New York state has now made a commitment to fully fund education we're in the second year of that and next year will be the third so early on this is a big impact to our school district it's an addition of 5.1 million
009dollars for the coming school year so significant investment in education way behind where it should be but we have it now and we'll make the best use of it also investment earnings are another critical part of this as you know interest rates are high we have money to invest so as we invest we make more money so right now we're up about we're projecting 229 thousand dollars of additional interest earnings over what we've had before in the past which has been pretty paltry with some of the interest rates terms of New York State retirement system contributions we have both the teachers retirement system and we have the employees retirement system those are the two systems that our staff belong to they both have contribution amounts that school districts must Place into those funds those rates
010vary from year to year and again with the high interest rates those funds have done better than projected better than average so we get the benefit of that so there is some if not savings keeping us within the same realm in terms of the amount of contributions that we'll pay to those two systems health insurance is going to go up um and there's a good reason for that we've had pretty good rates the last for quite some time now last decade or so but what happened during the pandemic is people stopped going to the hospital and people stop getting those routine screening tests that they needed so as a result people delayed in having medical attention that they might need and as a result now people are now going back to the hospital they have
011illnesses and diseases that weren't caught or uncovered now that are much worse than what they would have been otherwise that is driving Medical Health Care rates up so that's you'll see that across the board throughout the state this is the impact it's not unique to school district you need to our school district it's just what's happening in the overall environment in terms of health care so we will have an increase in in that of about one and a half million about 9.2 percent and again this is all very preliminary information that we're getting from our carries we don't have our actual rates but on average on average or in aggregate that's the kind of increases that we're looking at terms of debt payments we do have a new debt payments coming on we do have
012four Capital project under four capital projects underway where we're paying debt so we have our 2019 Capital project which is nearing completion we have a 2019 project at the Guilderland Public Library which the district is obligated to pay the debt for that has is pretty much complete as well we also have a bond authorization from 2021 for other additional Capital project here and that project has started and we also had to also borrow for taxertaries so we have a number of claims where assessments were challenged by taxpayers within the town mostly on the commercial side those can have quite impact in our district the amount of those potential refunds so we also bonded for a tax tertiary as well and then finally inflation although it's very high right now the projection is that it's going
013to drop over 2023 and 2024 so looking again number of financial reports have cited somewhere around the 2.9 percent rate for next year so every indicator is that's going to drop in that stay at the high level that it has so that will also have an impact on the budget so when we look at the categories that we typically describe in our budget are illustrate in our budget salaries and this is a comparison between what we have budgeted in the current year versus what we're projecting early on again um not having had an opportunity to actually see who's in in those spots this year this is taking last year's budgeted information and carrying it forward with anticipated increases but looking at our contracts and again trying to be cognizant of the fact that we're in
014a competitive environment for human resources and we have a number of positions that we have difficulty filling and we much like what's happening in the rest of the country we want to be competitive in terms of our rates and so we have tried very hard to stay within the middle of the Suburban Council and so we have a particular group teachers for example we want to try to be remain competitive within that group and our group is the Suburban Council so we in our contracts we have tried to not be at the top not be at the bottom but be competitive in that Arena and so you can see we do have increases in salaries going from 46 million to 48 million same with support staff another competitive very competitive area again those contracts reflect
015our standing of trying to be in the middle of the Suburban Council um again a half a million dollar increase we're projecting in salaries there uh benefits number of benefits that are offered in the school district besides um health insurance and in the retirement system contributions so we have life insurance and and other factors Social Security those sorts of things they're embedded in that line going from 28.2 million to 29.7 million equipment nominal supplies and textbooks and contracted Services can pretty much along the lines of what the CPI increases is looking like at this point Debt Service you'll notice a big jump in Debt Service as I mentioned we have those four projects going on we're adding debt so we need to account for that so there is a significant increase there in terms of
016our need to to borrow and then pay pay off that debt and then finally enter fund transfers is going up just about ten thousand dollars from the previous year on the revenue side we have state aid that's our biggest form of of local Revenue again with the foundation Aid increase that was finally a commitment from New York state which they followed through on uh were anticipating that large increase in state aid for next year local sources were expecting that to go up a little bit these are rentals and other sources of funding that we have appropriation of reserves and appropriation of fund balance again we're keeping those the same because it is a rollover budget we've had conversations about what the appropriate level of funding that we want to include in the budget from either
017reserves or fund balance that's our savings whether we want to continue at those same levels or not we haven't made that decision so again in terms of the context of a rollover budget we're continuing to carry them forward as is that'll be a discussion that certainly will come up during the budget development process and then finally we have our property tax levy as you can see there it's going from 78.2 million to 79.9 million under this estimate so in total our budget's going up from 109.9 million to 117.8 million overall on the expenditure side it's an increase of 7.9 million or 7.2 percent on the revenue side it's 6.2 million in Revenue side is smaller than the expenditure side so that's 19.6 percent because we're excluding the tax levy that tax levy increase is 1.7
018million or 2.2 percent so in terms of next steps budget process goes on for a while so the next marker here for us is senior executive budget proposal that will happen in January we will continue we've started the budget development work the detailed budget development work but that will continue it's ongoing now and it'll continue for the next several months we also are always looking for Community input and we'll be talking about that a little bit later legislative advocacy again New York State controls to purse strings for a large portion of our Revenue so we want to continue to Advocate strongly for for schools and the work that they do and then finally we'll be working our way toward the superintendent's draft budget proposal that will be shared on March 7th 2023. and I can
019answer any questions if board members have them yes SEMA yeah um so obviously this is a rollover budget but I was just wondering can you um give an update as to the the federal funds and where are that in terms of like when that sun sets or how much is left sure um we've had the federal funds available to us for a while they really aren't going to impact the budget at all um because they are separate and apart from our general fund budget but we've also been very clear about and what we've been very diligent about is making sure that whatever funding whatever we purchase out of the federal funds is not a reoccurring cost so although we have Staffing that we have carried in the federal funds people are aware that it's they're
020being paid out of federal funds and that there's an end to that it's not going to continue on so we've been careful with that with our purchases not creating something that is the start of something and paying for it with federal funds and then having to continue to provide for ongoing support of that so I think we made a very clean line we've met some needs that we need to meet in the short term again a lot of this is about helping students recover from the pandemic so those you know additional Staffing and support to help children as they transition the Lost Years in between and some of the things that didn't happen getting students requainted with coming to school giving them necessary report supports and materials to help get back on track so that's
021the idea of the federal funds is to use it for that purpose so from a from a budget perspective we're really keeping the federal funds separate from the budget we're putting our needs into the budget that we see in terms of non-federal needs the ongoing needs of the school district and we anticipate that the needs we've identified through the federal funds will get kids back on track and we won't need to sustain that going forward we have spent a good portion of the federal funds and and Staffing and resources have been applied we still have more money available part of that as you know from our conversation was a significant amount was going to our Capital Construction fund for the outdoor pavilions we that projects in at New York State education department has yet to
022be approved we're hoping to get that approved soon but that's earmarked for that otherwise Rachel's been doing a lot of this work so she can speak to this much better than I can she's living it day to day but really I think we have a good handle on the money we've spent for the right purpose and all of this has to meet the purposes in order to be eligible to receive the aid we have to document that and demonstrate that that it is to help kids get back on track again and provide appropriate supports and and I think we've been very diligent about making sure that is happening so the interaction between those two should they should be pretty much separate but we're doing good things for kids with both our general fund budget and
023with our federal funds for lunches for the rest of the rest of the school year and I know that's only like the one-time cost so it doesn't fix the problem of I know we still have to advocate for for free meals Etc but just curious we don't have to talk about it now but maybe we can keep that idea out there and if we've used and earmarked a bunch of the federal funds already for the other work like how much is left you know is it is it is there an option to pay for for free for meals for students for the second part of the year or something like that again I know this is not like a budget item that is long-term but if it's supposed to be able to stop Gap to
024help um and knowing that we've heard comments about um the food food insecurity right and I know it's not going to resolve everything but just in the meantime Rachel might want to make a camera what so we already had to earmark everything um so all of our applications for that money have been put in and approved right now the remaining money which we have until September 2024 to spend um is earmarked towards learning loss like Neil said so things like tutoring for students supplemental um learning products for example some handwriting products that we're buying for our younger children who may not have had some of the preschool experiences that other children would have had because of the pandemic um we also have money earmarked for summer and enrichment programs and after school programs and this
025third set of of Grants which is what we have left is the definition of what you can spend is much narrower so it would be much more difficult to have a general type of expense come out of that funds and what Neil said is is also true a large proportionate funds were earned for the Pavilion so while that money is not yet spent it is all earmarked is it set in stone I mean we could look at doing some amendments but it would mean we have would have to not do some of the things we've already promised so but we could discuss that in the future if we needed to I appreciate it also think it's just helpful to have that discussion that the federal funds are separate from the budget because people see that
026oh they got all these federal funds why can't they do XYZ and it's a one-term or it's a one-time cost or expense so thank you okay budget we used our our fund balance was relatively small compared to the Suburban council with the rollover budget it's the same amount as this year right correct so we're depleting from an already yes small so we have the lowest fund percentage of fund balance of how many Suburban Council school so allocating that is the wrong direction we want to try to build that up rather than use it so in the context again of a rollover budget we're assuming we're going to maintain that same draw from our reserves and fund balance but we've had that conversation the board has had that conversation about is that the path we really
027want to choose and if so we can back you know money is available you can reduce your our Reliance on fund balance and reserves to help fund the budget and try to get that back down to near zero and actually try to grow our fund balance and reserves rather than use our fund balance and Reserves so that's something to keep in mind as as we go forward in the budget development process any other questions okay thank you I think we should give Neil a round of applause [Applause] you might not want to Applause if I can't get this changed over so uh oh boy look at that one Superstars right there we go so I'm not doing this presentation just to let you know so inho um thank you Neil so well did you want
028to see anything cool okay uh we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is the bus replacement plan presentation so I'll turn this over to inho foreign good evening everyone um so I wanted to tell you where we are as as we um are done with I think the first quarter already um so this is how we have routed uh one of the things that I would simply highlight would be here where we were able to bring in four schools into our in-district runs with that we were able to do that because of bell time and because we were actually able to get a few more drivers and few drivers who delayed their retirement so there is a caveat there's a number of drivers that are going to be retiring in this
029coming year so we were able to save the district I would say significant um money as we brought in four schools that we outsourced last year this is our current condition uh in our Fleet um we number of years ago before my time we made a decision to go to gas buses and we did some infrastructure change and so forth and so we are almost at the 50 50 um uh sort of where we have 66 passengers uh 40 of them are diesel 41 our gas buses so that's where we are here's the reason why we are we have a 10-year replacement plan and that is because as we there are a number of issues that pop up with older buses and the main reason would be the corrosion since we do live in Northeast
030and we have snow that's going to be coming fairly soon uh and uh the real condition are such um and so to prevent that uh We've to mitigate that we have a number of methods to be able to do that and that is listed for us here um and here are some picture evidences to show uh the problem of corrosion on buses not to mention that it just looks ugly um so advantage of having new buses um obviously it's less expensive and maintenance and so forth but we also get the latest technology with the new buses as well here is our purchase history for the last 14 years to keep since we do have 109 buses in our Fleet we do have to maintain a certain number of purchases to be able to be on
031that 10-year rollover plan and and that sort of where we have been we've been flatlining at eight buses for the last three years and once again we're I'm suggesting that we purchase eight buses so our proposal is two of 35 passenger what we normally call small buses and 3 65 passenger buses and 365 passengers with chain and you would notice that from previous year the prices have jumped and you will also notice that I'm here nor normally later on but I'm here a little bit early because we did secure a a promise letter from a vendor saying that these prices will be fixed if we signed a letter of intent with your permission after today before January 1st when we are anticipating that the prices of the buses will go up again um so that
032is why here so on the horizon as many of you are well aware uh there is a emission School Bus mandate uh Target Time 2035 and we are to start purchasing uh July 1st of 2027 although there is a extension up to two years that that we can apply for that's on the horizon uh to but for us to be able to get to um zero emission school bus there is significant infrastructure considerations that we have to think about and that I will say that it will be significant also just to highlight that the electric buses as it stands right now is northward of four hundred thousand dollars per bus and so we will need some some help to say the least um so that's my presentation um I believe I will be followed by
033oh is there any questions I should take questions yes so you said that um the current like the gas buses on average are like 10 years right so if this law goes into um if this law is by 2035 that they have to it's really not that far out to think about the plan in terms of turning over the buses to emission-free buses and I'm assuming that all the buses we have note are not emission free no okay and like they realistically think like each bus is four hundred thousand dollars more part of that and that's all across the state yes across the country across the country yeah and so I we will uh we will see what the early adopters do and learn from them um that's our you know we are having conversation
034with those districts um and seeing what they're learning and how they are purchasing the buses um and what the so the do's and the don'ts and uh obviously we'll do the dues and we'll try to stay away from the thumbs as we learn from them but you know the even the advice is that we're getting from our vendors is you know let's just see what happens um you know we don't with this mandate we don't necessarily have to be at the front of the line um learning it the hard way um and so I will that's our intention or that's my intention to learn from early adopters um extension and does that just like the Northeast because I'm when you say it's across the country it just seems so crazy that's for New York State
035yeah for us yeah and then I guess I still have another question about the um the infrastructure piece like this sounds like this would be a considerable Capital project type of plan yes to make this change I mean and it's a law so it's not really an option so I don't know when business practices meets but I feel like she started thinking about this Cliff is eager to do another Capital process that's what I thought he is ready to bite onto this oh thank you thank you another question clip good evening I only came because Marie said to be cake for Neil's last meeting I mean how do you flip the page on this thing what what Arrow key I haven't been here in a long time I apologize thank you Dr Wiles and to
036sema's point we we did have a discussion with the business practice committee last week and we probably will at some point next year start talking with consultants and looking at the infrastructure as far as the electric buses goes because it is sizable to for the the electric piece for the Chargers different types of chargers stuff like that but um on the facility side I actually proposed this last year to the business practice committee and we were unable to get pricing under State contract for the truck so I withdrew it side note the truck we ordered in 2020 that we reordered in 2021 still has not arrived yet so I'm hoping 2023 will get our Courier vehicle that's been ordered twice so we are looking to retire our 21 year old salt truck with 125 000
037miles on it and then shift to our one of our 2008 pickup trucks with 96 000 miles on it we'll go into semi retirement as the salt truck we've done this model before as you can see truck 21 years old we pushed these trucks about as far as we can push the trucks but it just becomes not financially sound to keep maintaining them estimated cost is 80 000. I did actually receive the state contract cut sheets yesterday for the truck and that's something I will review with Justin bombard our Fleet Maintenance supervisor because we kind of we build the truck the motor the alternators everything set up the plow will probably be in the mid 70 range it looks like so it will be a little lower than the 80. but same with the buses
038pre-covered this was probably a 55 000 truck it's about it's going to be probably like a 20 000 increase for the same vehicle and that's it and no cake so any questions thank you thank you foreign so the the next topic before I get to it is about the board Direction regarding the budget but I want to take a minute here to embarrass Mr Sanders yet again um yes this was his last presentation um on our rollover budget and he also has provided for the last 18 years just wonderful guidance and support to the presentation that followed his from our transportation department and our facilities and maintenance department and I can't underscore enough how much this community in this district has benefited from the steady hands on the wheel of Mr Neal Sanders in helping
039us navigate some very difficult Financial Times political times Economic Times pandemic times it's been a roller coaster and I think we should all be immensely thankful that we've had a partner in this work who is a hundred percent unflappable I don't think I've ever seen Neil rattled ever and we've had plenty of opportunities he may have hidden under his desk while he was but he hid it from me very well but I think anyone who has worked with Neil or has observed him working knows that he is the consummate professional a gentleman a kind person who understands the mission of what we do in this school district and that is a a rare individual who sits in the chair that he sits in the folks who do that work just you know want to balance
040the budget and count the beans but it's so so so much more than that so Neil I am personally in denial of your departure I I think I'm gonna wake up and go what happened there um but on my own behalf but I hope on behalf of everyone I I want to say thank you for your commitment to the Guilderland Central School District and to this entire Community you have made this District a better place and you will be missed foreign thank you for those kind words uh I just want to say again what a great experience he's been so humbled to be here so happy to be here and work with various boards various various administrations current Administration Linda who's been by my side for the whole time Cliff who's been here for a
041long time people that are committed to this District as well and do an outstanding job in your commitment to helping for the education of all of our children and supporting our families it's been a pleasure to work here I'm going to miss it greatly and appreciate all of you and what you've done for me and I'll be watching at home thank you Neil thank you so much Neil thank you Dr Wiles I'll go I just want to say one thing Neil um I've had the opportunity over these many years to go to conventions and I'm like as a board member I've been going to the nisbah convention and there they have this huge uh huge exposition of all these vendors and you walk around and someone they talk to you and stuff like that but
042I have to tell you when my tag when they see gildalen and they say Neil Sanders I can't tell you how many times across this state that they say you are so lucky and I say you know it and we know it thank you thank you thank you Neil I also agree with Dr Wiles all of the comments that you made and I just um wanted to say that I feel like it's easy is probably the numbers person to see people at just crunch numbers and see everybody's widgets but I do see that you are truly in this for the kids and you always talk about the the school community and there's no way I'd be on audit with someone who made me feel stupid to be on the audit so I'm a super um
043thankful and appreciative that you truly allow us to ask all questions and don't and don't make us feel foolish for doing that okay there's no secret cake right there is no secret thing happening I thought Cliff Was Gonna Bake and apparently he changed his mind um no secret cake but it is um just a reminder to the Board of Education that it is now the board's opportunity to start formulating some ideas around priorities for the 2023-2024 school budget we are um we are have completed stage one of the budget development process that's the portion of our process where we meet with all of our administrators to say how do the decisions that we landed on last April which feels like a lifetime ago how are they playing out now that we are back in school
044for um several weeks we're just about to start stage two which is when our team um explains to us what their needs are for the upcoming school year so we'll have lots more information for the board around that we have a expanded leadership council meeting next week and I've asked um our our team to come with one or two priorities so that you can get a sneak peek at the things that are on their minds but then much more detail to follow as we go along so from the board's perspective last Thursday we put out a thought exchange just for the board and I was in there and a number of you have been in there adding your thoughts um there are a couple um survey questions before you start with the thoughts one is
045about challenging the text Levy limit and the other is about the use of fund balance and then there are just a number of thoughts that you can take a look at and rate it will be open until midnight on Friday so I encourage everyone to go in go in multiple times and we appreciate the time you take to do that great thank you Dr Wells just to clarify so the um the list that we normally get from administrators would be in the next meeting so you'll get a general list after our meeting okay um and then you'll get a much more detailed one once we get through stage two okay I was rating some thoughts in there so if other people want to go in and do some more Thoughts by the end of the
046week that would be great I know that there's been more since the last time I looked so we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is the consent items this includes the minutes of the November 15th meeting cpsc and CSE recommendations Personnel actions personal action and financials a through C can I have a motion to approve the consent items uh Katie's second Gloria any questions or comments on favor passes 9-0 next on the agenda information oh curriculum and destruction I'll turn this over to Rachel okay um tonight I am pleased to honor some of our Middle School and High School musicians the gilderland high school music department excuse me the gilderland music department is proud to announce that eight students have been recognized by the New York State band Directors Association each
047year from hundreds of applicants honor band members are chosen based on their nisma score from the previous spring each Ensemble rehearses and performs during the New York State band directors association's annual Symposium held in Syracuse in the first weekend in March selected to perform in the High School honor band are Carson rittner clarinet and sexy Wang clarinet performing with the Middle School honor band are Adam herall check euphonium Anthony Padula French horn Caleb Pinder flute and Aaron vitelli trumpet Timothy Kelly mallets and Austin Lee oboe were recognized as alternates selection to this prestigious ensembles demonstrates exceptional musicianship and is an outstanding accomplishment congratulations to these fine young players and to their teachers Ms Kathleen Ellinger Mr John potuzzo Mr Jason utter and Ms Alexis Sinclair great thank you Rachel next we'll move on to superintendent
048information Dr Wiles okay good evening everyone I want to take just a couple minutes to really hit the highlights of a summary of our thought exchange that was released before the Thanksgiving holiday earlier today our Communications office posted a story about The Exchange on our website so I'm just gonna literally show you how to get to it from here and the story summarizes the timing and the number of participants and you can see the hyperlink for the summary report so we did have um quite a bit of participation we had 2754 participants 1835 thoughts in a hundred and eighty two thousand eight hundred and eighty two ratings and that 182 000 number was actually uh surprising to the folks over at thought exchange because I I had a couple conversations with our Support over there
049because as Mrs Cantor pointed out this was a unusual Exchange in many ways and I had some concerns about it one of the things that are our support person over there said was that it was the highest number of average um each thought was rated more often on average than any exchange she had ever seen before so people were engaged for good or for maybe not so great but people were certainly engaged with it so when you click on this it takes you to the summary report and and I I won't go through you know 1835 thoughts but people who want to take some time to look at this can go ahead and do that so this exchange was set up so it uh was um able to be accessed by three separate groups of
050individuals that there was a student pathway there was a faculty and staff pathway and then there was a parent guardian or community community member pathway um and so you can see the breakdown of um participants and then you can take a look at uh the theme so I'll just click on this and the way this is set up one way to look at this is the combination of all of the groups and when you do that you can see kind of the priority themes and themes is a good way to think about this rather than individual thoughts so when you look at the combined groups of individuals what were the themes that really resonated for them I'm going to go Group by group though it's a little bit easier to digest and I'm going to
051start with parents and community members so when when I look at this to figure out what are the things that people care about when we're working on the budget honestly it's the themes along the bottom that drive the thinking and so from our community members and from our parents um it's not surprising that the most highly rated theme that came across and all of this was around class size and if you dive into those you'll see that a lot of them have to do with the middle school because you'll remember last year we spent a lot of time talking about how to take care of the very high class sizes at the middle school so that has come back again learning resources and Technology also high on the list lots of comments about Wi-Fi and
052you know supporting the technological needs for our students safety was huge that is not a surprise given kind of the last six weeks or so within our school district people have a lot of things to say about about safety breakfast and lunch we're high on the priorities as well people do miss that free lunch option and so we are within my own role but also with my colleagues we are advocating heavily at the state and federal level to get that reinstated because those free lunches made a huge huge and breakfast made a huge difference to our families so you can look down the line of the of the topics that were important to everyone who fell within the parent and guardian group and then for faculty and staff lots of similarities again right at the
053top of the line was class size Lots about employee benefits this has a lot to do with pay scales and working conditions kinds of things but also in that third spot is more about safety and again not surprising because of when we launched this exchange it was right after we had been through some pretty significant times a mental health continues to be a topic of high priority student support and you can see all the way down the line and then just last I will click on the student one and their top topic was learning resources and Technology but really it's about Wi-Fi which is repaired but not quite smooth because of a glitch and I I need a Dave Austin on Dave um uh how old to give me the ins and outs of all
054of that but we have a we have a solution for it so we should be able to get our kids on Wi-Fi easily and students get frustrated when sites are blocked and some of that is just a function of the fact that we're a school and we have to block sites some of that's a function of Ed law 2D and having vendors giving us assurances that they're going to protect our students personally identifiable information which is not really popular with our young people so they told us about that uh breakfast and lunch also a high topic for similar reasons what I thought was really interesting though on our Student Response inclusive holidays and time off was right up there at the top of the line it was toward the end for our parents and our
055faculty and staff so you can see transportation is there start times coming to school in the dark is not all that popular because we would suspect and of course safety is there as well and you can see as they go down the road the other issues that are of concern to them so I'm gonna kind of leave it at that and just take your questions and comments um but you should know that it's easy to get to and you can dive as deeply as you want to for as long as you want to and and get a sense of what was on the minds of our uh Community while we were doing this Exchange so I'll I'll take any questions go ahead Rebecca you know so certainly some some themes are ranked higher than others
056but there isn't a huge discrepancy that I can see well the one of the reasons there's a couple ways to look at this and I'm glad you asked that question one way is to look at where the way it's set now is the relative importance that themes got based on the rating so um this other one this little number sign is the themes based on numbers of comments let me go to a different one here student one is let me go to this one so you see more of a slope when it's just pure numbers of comments but the star basically tells you even though there may have been fewer numbers of comments on some of those areas they got lots of fives so you can click between the two I tend to like the
057one that people starred more because that um positively validates the residents of those thoughts but you can look at it both ways but that's a great question for people who want to look at both um methods go ahead Nate in the sense is it five times more than he's ever seen and that's what we maybe we should be a little concerned about this well um actually it was a positive for her you know I will um when we were four or five days into the exchange and you know there were lots lots and lots of activity I reached out to um the young woman over at thought exchange that helps us and a few days into that and she was looking at the exchange she was helping me moderate some of the comments that came
058through because we do moderate the comments and she pulled up the stats and she said that the rating of a hundred means I'll try to I didn't say it very well last time but um a hundred ratings it was the average for every single thought typical around 30 30 or 40. so it was maybe not five times better but it was her assessment of of it was it was a lot of Engagement and I think a lot of that engagement came from the student side of the exchange and you know I'll be 100 transparent we probably will do thought exchanges a little bit differently going forward when we're um involving the students as well for example I probably won't do one exchange with three pathways I think in future exchanges we would do the students
059separately and we would probably separate middle and high school and we would have them log in typically we don't ask people to log in because the feeling of anonymity is supposed to encourage participation in saying what's on your mind without fear of being connected but in this particular exchange I I feel like there was um a little bit of disregard for kindness I mean just to be blunt there were over 800 comments that were artificially intelligence wise flagged and sent to me to be reviewed which is a lot almost entirely um well if you um when you start the exchange it says please be sure to be kind respectful don't use anybody's name um and there's a couple other things and so the algorithm behind this can flag those automatically and participants can also flag
060them so over the course of the nine days this was open you know 800 comments which was a lot the most I've ever seen some of it was silliness like this doesn't make sense but there were comments that use people's names there were comments that were rude and hurtful that underscored how important it does is for us to be doing diversity equity and includes inclusive work here in the district so if those were filtered off they did not get into the exchange the artificial intelligence though is not perfect so it doesn't catch everything so go ahead SEMA I know that um took over for like the other community meetings we would have for the budget and I know it's only you know one instrument but kind of to miss cantor's point about um relying so
061heavily on it I almost feel like it becomes like this platform for people to just anonymously write whatever they want and you can open up many browsers and keep you know posting the same thing and I know that we would do it differently for students but um but you know it's almost kind of like a like an anonymous chat board online which is really dangerous I feel the and we're relying on this and I think it's I think it's good to to get the feedback but I just worry that you know we we don't always have um a good like pulse of what the community's feeling and so we rely on this I think it would be helpful to have like a couple of maybe two or three different ways to reach out to the
062community and that um that's how you triangulate data like you're not relying on just this one um instrument and I don't know if it was Communications or I know that thought exchange is used within the district too but I I do think it would be worthwhile and I know Ms cantor's comments or critiques about thought exchanger like we've heard this in the past couple years and maybe it was just more Stark this year with some of the comments being you know racist misogynistic Etc I people might see that and then just feel you know it becomes like a platform to just write extreme comments and then other people can just go and continue to rank those really high and you know like like um like Miss Cantor said other people go on there and what
063does that tell you how does that make you feel which I don't think that is the purpose of of thought exchange so I don't know I'm concerned about just using one venue or one instrument to rely on but we're very early in the process so and it's not like well here's what thought exchange said so we have to do this this is a guide you know definitely but I mean we open up the board meeting you know for public comment and generally a lot of people don't show up right unless there's like you know one item and sometimes the thoughts are the comments and thought exchange are not even budget related most of these are not yeah so there's a lot of things there that are that are nice to know but it doesn't really
064guide our work for the budget so I don't know maybe it's just something to think about I think um to how we could get a better pulse of what the community's feeling about the budget right is it is there anything that we can steal and so you know something work well for another District in the area that we might want to just copy and besides I mean I agree with you I agree completely with SEMA using I mean we need more than one tool and I know if it's early in the process but it's you know we this is the time to have this discussion about what other tools can we use you know to me to be honest with you a lot of our neighbors really aren't doing a lot of community outreach when
065we went through the first recession back in 2010-11 we had a lot of people in this room who were wanting to talk about our priorities because we were making very difficult decisions but over time people stopped coming so we've tried a variety of different things so I mean I don't think this is the answer I think it's one way to get the pulse and I think I would like to have ongoing conversations with our friends over at thought exchange to say okay how do we get data that's um I'll just say better data but I do think this is an early look we've got four months ahead of us go ahead Rebecca what the stars are you know because to miss cantor's point the comment about food insecurity I read the same one um people
066might have marked it as one star not to degrade the person who wrote it but because it wasn't maybe a budget priority to that person so I think defining more what one star is three stars is might be helpful in the intro but I think people skip that because at five means you strongly agree and one means you strongly disagree Blanca I'm gonna confirm that like no student names are published on our like that they've been filtered out for sure right no yes I mean the names names are easy to filter out unless they do something with spacing or whatever but I I had our friends over there take a look to make sure this data was clean I I needed I honestly needed help to moderate it it was all I did for a
067couple days so I think it gives us some insight I don't think it's the whole story by any stretch um you know and there's some lessons learned from this experience for for sure go ahead Gloria okay we're doing um Community conversations we've tried that many years and it just you couldn't get people to come out it's tough at night especially if you've got kids at home and it was just like we weren't getting the input we wanted so we were looking for some way of of tapping in so this was one One Direction but I I do agree there's got to be other ways you know I was thinking of something I can't remember who said it but maybe looking at we see as BOCES a lot for this but some sort of focus groups
068you know different groups in the in the community so that we set them up for discussion and sharing and things like that so we can hear and give people a voice uh because I think that's important too because there are people that won't do this but they're walking around with you know for feelings and it one you know I think we have to tap like like SEMA and Nate said different modes because people respond differently depending on who they are and what they feel comfortable with so inviting people a certain group to a focus group for students a focus group uh you know staff whatever and with a question that they might have a discussion somebody facilitate it and we listen I don't know I don't know but well I almost wonder I think that's
069a great idea I mean we've been talking about doing focus groups in a variety of contexts like Mr piscatelli's doing them right now with students around issues in the high school and so on and as part of our Equity audit we'll be doing focus groups around diversity equity and inclusion my hunch is that that is a good idea when we get further down the road and the budget like when we're at decision points we're really not at decision points right now we're at here's in general where we are we're gathering information about what worked from last year what we may need going forward but in February we're going to be making decisions like this is it and this is not in and so do we get feedback on those kinds of decision points that will
070some of this noise in here will be filtered out because we can't address all of this go ahead Kim I mentioned the community yes was that when and I'm trying to think when we first moved here was that when you had like administrators in different areas and then people would come in okay is there any way to maybe bring that back but not have the wall of suits well no and it wasn't gone wasn't that one people we couldn't get numbers well no and I remember that and I remember that people would say because I remember coming because we had first moved here and it was a and I didn't know what it was so I came in and I remember there was like nobody here but then people that were here were intimidated because
071it was literally a wall of suits in the back that's what I remember about it where it was like you want to ask questions and be able to speak freely about the budget but yet you have every administrator that exists in this District or does something in a suit on the back wall and you're talking to them and people are like I'm not saying anything over the years believe me we tried different you know tweaked it kept tweaking that and there was a time when they weren't part of the groups we had them across the hall the groups you know we spread them out with the facilitator from BOCES so that that wasn't an issue but we you know we try to learn but a big the big thing with it was we couldn't get
072people it was inconvenient to get people out at night in the middle of winter in the middle of winter of course it was tough it was tough and I understood that but we still want to talk to people well I'm looking at the chair of our Communications committee it sounds like this is a an item Gloria for the next time we're together to think about what what other options do we have to triangulate that's a great a great word for this yep okay thank you Dr Wiles uh next on the agenda we've board president info we have one item here which are the school resource officer update in Dei training I think Dr Wiles and I are going to kind of um tag team and give a um a little update I don't know if
073Dr Wells if you were planning to talk about the survey results for the sros s sure I can um we used a different tool this time um we did just a recap when we were together last at the board meeting we talked about Gathering additional information about the school resource officer from the perspective of our students so last week we we crafted a survey we had a survey for our high school students and a survey for our middle school students and um so I can just share the results I'm sorry I don't have a lovely PowerPoint on this one at the high school we had 694 students participate um 72.9 of them when asked yes or no are you would you like to have another SRO uh in the district that would be stationed at
074Farnsworth so almost 73 said yes 27 said no they would not um when we did the survey we we asked students their gender and their race and ethnicity because we wanted to see if there were any differences among various groups of students and I have the breakdown here and I can basically summarized by saying no when we looked um especially at the high school female male non-binary or prefer not to say except for the preferred not to say they were all 70 73 75 percent in favor of having an additional SRO that would be at the um middle school and I'll just point out that many of the many of the students who said no they said no because they want another one at the high school um and then we also broke out the
075data by ethnicity and I'm I am going to summarize uh the group is just you know our students of color which included our Asian students our black and black black and African-American students um um Hispanic Latino and biracial and when we looked at those students to see if there was you know we've talked a lot about are are those students going to be somehow feeling uncomfortable it that did not bear out we had 74.4 percent of our black students in favor of another SRO um 73 of our uh let um Latino Hispanics 70 of our biracial um so it seems strong feelings from our high school at the middle school we had 699 students who participated 80.3 said yes they were in favor of having an SRO in their building 17.9 said no there was
076a little bit of a difference in gender among the middle schoolers 87 percent of females said they were in favor of an SRO um and it was 75 73 74 75 percent for males non-binary and those who preferred not to say and then when we looked at race ethnicity those subgroups were 80 percent yes in favor of having an SRO foreign so I have a couple comments but I know that people have asked for this to be put on the agenda so I'll kind of open it up to everybody else first I'm lucky you asked for this to be in the agenda correct okay yeah does anybody else have comments hello yeah okay so I've um I feel like Marie had mentioned at one point what about adopting this as a as a pilot and
077then giving the SRO committee more time to discuss things like the Dei concerns and sorry and um maybe discuss training the EI training which Sean agreed to and the chief agreed to so I'd kind of like to get a sense of what people think about that accepting it as a pilot for this year based on the now we've heard from most of our populations but specifically the students and um at the same time you know following through with the SRO committee I'm sorry I don't feel well so what are people's thoughts in general my main concern was I agreed with what Nate was pointing out the last meeting that you know students in in minority groups might because that's what the research was telling us but I also listened to what Chief said about does
078our community reflect those research papers you know we're a different Community than so I'm you know I'm listening very carefully to to this survey that results here and it's it's very strong in terms of the kids feelings um I you know I just I guess the only thing I would say is um only thing that really got to me was when watching the video was uh Sean's uniform that presence of it looked very intimidating to me this is just my personal uh and I don't know I know the chief said that there was a lot of discussion about what type of uniform an SRO would have and whether that has any impact at all on on how students perceive uh for me it was you know it was the perception of oh my God we
079really got some severe issues here and we've got to have somebody that's armed and that that so that really struck them and I don't know if that's something that I I'd really like to see but if we could think about it or discuss that and how the uniform and the presence of the officer in the in the school Community is done that's all uh but I was very encouraged by the survey result I was moved by that and by the the parent uh the the people who came and spoke but I was very concerned because of so many of people that came and spoke are of the majority and except for the last young lady who came uh so I was very interested in hearing these results from the students but excuse me but I
080think with the video that that showed the children's relationship with Sean um was very moving and it I don't know the I guess the uniform didn't bother me I was more interested in seeing how they reacted to him they knew who he was and they obviously felt comfortable and and um knew that that he was there and was listening to them and I thought that was very impressive that's what I noticed most about it so thank you Sean I just want to say something about the video and I guess to block his comments as well so first that I don't um I I know that voori's well has been talking about also adding an SRO to their district and I just think that they're taking a much more measured approach but we also have this
081offer on the table so I don't want to be a barrier to what seemingly um administrators students are asking for so I am fine with the idea of taking it as like a pilot program I will say that if we're talking about adding a position for the budget next year so once it becomes part of the budget it's really hard to take it out of the budget so this is like a line item that stays and something like the video to me was really nice but it didn't really teach me about the SRO program and I feel like if people are going to vote and um you know give feedback or debate about items in the budget we need to give more information than than a video like that like I was it was very
082nice and I it seemed like those the students really like Sean so that's great but I also feel like there are people who ask all the time what's the national row they don't really know what it is so I don't know what they're commenting on in this when they get a survey like that they might know very little I know just from what we've talked about but I don't know from that video and I know that's just one example I don't know about what the the daily activities are and I know that someone had asked before on the board about getting some more um detail about that and then the only other comment I have is that if we you know go that route just like any other thing it would be helpful to know
083how we evaluate or measure that it's a successful program because hearing from like a handful of students is great but that doesn't speak for you know the majority of the district like if we're doing this at multiple buildings and administrators are asking what's the feedback loop that we're going to use to see if this is effective the SRO committee and thank you for your comments I will say that I feel like in general perhaps the level of scrutiny of the SRO program program in particular is a little uh more prevalent it seems um I don't remember it being quite so difficult to hire Matt for instance or I don't know are we asking for any kind of update on the Dei any kind of measurement and I just think it's important to keep in mind
084that we be fair um and so I put that out there yeah and I mean yes it's fair to ask the other things but I do think before uh hiring the Dei coordinator coordinator there was there were so many incidents and you can just go back in the Enterprise and read about all the different things have come up in the in the district and so I don't know by I I think that would be basically denying that building as a racism problem right and I was obviously in favor we did that on the fly it made perfect sense to me and we voted as a group I think everybody literally voted in favor of that but what I'm saying is we also have lots of fights at the high school and I was going to
085mention this later but I feel like perhaps some of the board members are a little disconnected because you don't have kids in the high school and on top of it which I didn't realize till just a couple weeks ago all the board members are not on the Guilderland email thread right on the list serve and I I wanted to bring that up later Marie I don't know if it's appropriate but I think it would be it's really important for all the board members to know for example about the lockdown drills and things like that um that's my two cents so I do feel like there's some stuff maybe you don't know I'm I mean I get the feedback from the high school I don't have kids in high school but I have a kid in
086middle school and I know that's what we're trying to create a position for so it's not like that you know and it's also not a requirement to be to have kids in the school to be a board member but I you know asking that feedback from the the district I think is completely valid and reasonable um it was another point but I don't remember there's Rebecca and then Kim and then Katie popular topic um so I agree with SEMA I wouldn't want to stand in the way of a pilot program but I have two concerns about the sustainability of the program one is we just got a budget presentation for a rollover budget we talked about the fact that we have the lowest fund balance Reserve in the Suburban Council I just worry very much
087about budgeting for next year and I think we have to be really cautious about adding new programs again we're really early in the budgeting process so I don't know what the next three or four months are going to show us but it's it's a concern that I have and then the second concern I have is um whether or not we can amend the mo mou that we created in February or March I can't remember when um the mou recommends um annual professional development and I know um officer Ralston and the chief have been very supportive of that but I really think we should require it it shouldn't just be a recommendation it should be a requirement um and to Judy's Point into sema's point the video was lovely I mean clearly the students are so
088engaged with officer Ralston they have such so much respect for him it's really commendable what um relationships you've built with our students but I'd really like some data like some actual data about what on a weekly basis what transpires with the SRO I think that's helpful I think it's important for our oversight and I think the video and the presentation last time really kind of lacked that um I think we should be a data driven board um and there wasn't a lot of data agree with Blanca whoop sorry I agree with Blanca I feel like our students and and our teachers and our our community and our staff have been saying they don't feel safe at the end of the day they don't feel safe and we keep I I love the idea of the
089pilot program at least to start and I understand that once we put something on a budget line item it's hard to take off but we keep saying that we're here for all of our kids and we're literally scrutinizing safety our students and it didn't matter backgrounds anything like that in majority the ones that participated said that they wanted this because they want to feel safe and as a parent of a high schooler and someone who has like who's sitting there when I when I go to like my son's events and the kids are sitting there or if I'm at the high school and these kids are telling me about how they're in class and it's not because of a class size or things like that that they're not that they're not learning it's because they're
090literally afraid in thinking about which Halls they can and cannot walk down and I know that we're talking about doing this for the middle school but this is going to affect the high school too if we have someone at the middle school therefore keeping someone at the high school full-time and I also after the last meeting because I wanted to know more as well did my own research because especially like every town was mentioned every town was mentioned because it shows that they don't prevent gun related incidents but they do reduce fights at school they also took their data from Texas from 2014 to 18. so they also don't recommend having the the drills because the drills like our lockdown drills cause harm to the entire Community but we can't stop doing our lockdown drills
091because if something does happen we do have to have everyone feeling like there's a plan like we all just rightfully so lost our minds because we had a lockdown drill that did not go as planned and people were petrified because they didn't know what to do in emergency and I know I tend to be the emotional one which is why I brought my data this time but our kids just keep saying they don't feel safe and I'm not understanding why we have to scrutinize this into I think it Blanca said at her point we have a Dei director we have a positivity project that no offense did one of the worst video presentations that we've seen as a board in my opinion because those kids were just reading off of cards and we haven't questioned
092and asked for data on that project that teachers are told or parents are told and yes I have permission if need be from parents to say so that well we're not adding a social worker or this because we have the positivity project where why aren't we asking for data on that like we're scrutinizing this this is our kids safety a question that has to be project you've been asking but we 've done anything and we don't push it we just keep approving it after because they come and do a nice presentation and then we still hear from the teachers especially at the middle school that it's it's not working the students think it's a joke and even at the high school I know they're trying to fit it in this is stuff where if we
093were going to do the positivity project it should have been done starting at the earlier levels so we're at least teaching these kids instead of by the time with our top-down approach in this District they're not causing all the issues like a tangent I'm just saying that that is but I don't believe it is I don't think it's a tangent I'm just I'm just curious that you people don't question positivity projects and they do every day I get emails from people about positivity projects we've heard from Rebecca so many times about it not being effective at the high school but it is the same thing right oh yeah I'm not doing it they can't do it I remember that but it's the same thing with this I guess I guess that's why I get frustrated
094because it's like we had students come in and it was like we literally looked at those students that day and said well you're not the majority I don't think that's true and I also think that some of the stuff that the people that have written to us about was Safety and Security have been about the lockdown drill for example which really is not completely related to the SRO program so I do feel like some of it's conflated it's it's not but I'm just saying I guess the way I looked at it that day is if we're going to bring data from one place into it then we need to bring all the data and if you think it's a tangent it's a tangent and that's fine I'm okay with that it wouldn't be the first
095or last time someone thought it was going off on a tangent I guess as a parent of a high schooler and as someone who literally watches these kids tell me they're scared I'm frustrated that we are literally doing the same thing meeting after meeting they're sitting here and I can see the frustration on Sean's face at times because it doesn't I I don't think the kids really care that he's wearing anything he's a mentor he's someone that's in there and I'm assuming and you could probably answer this better the research that I did there are certain protocols and guidelines for New York state that if you're an SRO you have to follow anyways and things that you have to do and programs that you have to do I know the AFT and the Nea also
096have strong suggestions as well Katie and the Nate information without hang on is the support to teachers that comes from the SRO and I guess you know the video was great and I think that it's important that we see the relationship and support for students but there were there are a couple of areas where sros Provide support in schools to teachers that weren't really the focus of that but do become a part of the role of having an SRO in the building um especially when you have instance of CPS involvement or different orders of protection or areas that are another safety issue that we haven't hit on and I think that that would be important for information to provide for everyone else who maybe isn't working in the school day to day about the role
097that you do provide also in support of teachers that directly impact student and teacher safety I mean that kind of data would be helpful and it's kind of like what Rebecca asked about like a weekly report as to how that plays out like you said Katie like I mean think of a few instances in my own career which I've worked with them and I think that that's like piece that we haven't included but our teachers rely on our sros significantly in those moments you know I I worked with Matt on a case for you know for a student and he was there to protect my role as the teacher I wasn't taking into consideration that the student arrived unfortunately with an injury to me but I was the one reporting it I wasn't responsible for
098that injury but he was taking the report and protecting my role as the teacher and I think sometimes like we miss that piece that they're providing support for schools for our teachers that we haven't discussed so that's all I wanted to have Nate yeah I got a bunch of things first off the implication that because I don't have a kid in the high school that I don't care about kids in the high school I at Blanca first of all cuddle you know you said that because I don't know what's going on in the high school then I'm somehow separated or I can't really speak to it that's how I interpreted it okay that's fine but that doesn't mean that I don't care about what happens to these people and I never made that okay let
099me finish that's that's my first point now I want to get into the other stuff and again I'm gonna I'm I I know I'm swollen Upstream here so I'm not going to stand in the way of any of this I agree completely with Rebecca was saying we need to get the data we need to be a data driven here we've always been data driven about everything we've tried to make the decision and it feels unfortunately with a lot of these things and I I hear what uh Kim is saying about the positivity project is we don't get a lot of data on this stuff when we really need to because we if we're going to make decisions that are going to be based on the limited Financial funds we have to play with at coming
100at the right word to play we need to have some understanding about what the actual effect of those decisions is so I I'm I'm wholeheartedly on board I don't know how we do it but we need to figure it out and that's for this as well for the SRO my concern after listening and digesting what was said the last meeting and going through these comments on this uh thought exchange about security I think we're this is becoming an easy answer to a very difficult and complex issue in saying we have a security problem whether we say it out loud or not we have a security problem these guys can't do anything about it and that's not because they they're not capable it's because we have a massive building culture level systematic problem that we are
101not addressing and when we're talking about limited resources I my concern is taking that limited resource and applying it to one individual as good as that person maybe if we could clone him and he'd work for free I'd hire seven of them but we can't and we can't guarantee that the person working at the middle school is going to be shot could it be I mean my understanding is that the person we had here before Sean wasn't the greatest SRO so is that what we're gonna get now again that's all on the side my point being is we have systematic problem that we should be looking at applying our funds our limited funds to addressing that so that these guys and what they do can be so much more effective and we it's not going
102to be as effective as it can be because we're not asking and we're not addressing difficult and complex problems because we're scared or we don't have the right people in place or we don't want to talk about spending money about it and that's the concern I have is that we're getting an easy answer to a difficult question because it's simple and we can't do simple with this type of issue I'm done sorry so um as I said before the SRO is a part of the puzzle I agree with Nate going back to my point about a disconnect you may notice that the Safety and Security committee is the only committee that doesn't report out and I get why that is but at the same time it's also frustrating because I think the perception you don't
103know exactly what we're doing the whole board doesn't know and I don't know a way around that Marie I don't know if we can put it in the portal or something but I feel like there's really important work being done by the Safety and Security committee and you know the board the whole board is as a whole doesn't know and tell me if I'm wrong that's not a board committee right that's why we don't get a share out we have a sort of rep on it I don't know if there's a way around it but I want to put that out there so there's stuff going on that which is also part of this puzzle and with regard to being data driven what I'm asking is that we accept this as a pilot so we
104can continue the work that we started we met twice we met two times the second time was about um you know divvying up the responsibilities of finding the data and then so we didn't get to fulfill our job and so we would like a little more time but this offers on the table and I think we should take it based on you know the what people want in the thought exchange amongst the students but I agree with you I think we should finish our task as a subcommittee I do still think that we are a little more scrutinous about this than we are out of the positivity project many people aren't sold on it we didn't get data but we still voted for it based on the administrators coming out in favor of it and
105The Fluffy video I mean can I just say something are you saying that reminded me of my other point that I kind of forgot it's okay for us to be scrutinous of this and it's okay for us to be scrutinous at a higher level than maybe our the positivity project because of what is concerned here and what we're what what is being asked here is to put an armed SRO in a building so that's going to get it should get more scrutiny than spending 17 000 a year that we get federally funds for on a positivity project you know what I mean so I unders I don't I don't I don't want you to take it personal because you're being scrutinous it's it's it's a it's a difficult topic I mean it's a difficult topic
106everywhere it's a difficult that's why these guys are here because it's a difficult topic so we we got to scrutinize that's what we're up here for we get the emails and letters from from from uh concerned community members about this that's fine but I I just I I think this this idea that we're more scrutinous of this than something else I mean yeah we are of course we should be having more data on this before we make a bigger commitment I'll just say that somebody wrote on the thought exchange um that they just thought it was strange that the town had like the ability to offer a police officer like so quickly to us for free which I also think is kind of strange again I'm not going to be a barrier because everybody is
107in support of it so I'm happy to support if that's what people want but I just think that it is it kind of puts you in a corner of course you're not going to say no you know and everybody wants that and then all of a sudden it's well the next year you're going to pay for it so um it kind of puts us into predicament um you know I just want to put that out there but yeah I'm happy to also support this as a pilot for this year and I don't and it would be also helpful to know without like details that can't be shared at the public meeting Blanca about kind of what transpires at the Safety Committee we're the board why is it secret can it be an executive like why
108is there this other group that can't share information let me jump in so every school district needs to have an empty and security Committee in order to develop its safety plan it's been in place for years and years and years and it's it's not a board committee it's a school district committee and we recently opened it up to have board representation on it having said that I don't see any reason why I can't share the minutes with you on the portal um there are confidential things that are discussed there around our safety plans and procedures um so I will be you know I may edit some things out but ultimately you see our secure building level emergency response plans every July there's no no reason it's not meant to be a secret I can certainly
109share those and you have the minutes from our last subcommittee meeting and you can share those we can share those as well that's leading up to those plans are relevant you know it paints a different picture there's there's a lot involved right there's a lot of steps before it reaches the board my two cents that are they allowed to address like I like to answer your question because my question yeah like the pilot why they're able to do a pilot like because you said I forget who it was pilot is my word so okay well yeah like are able to provide someone this year well I don't want to put them on the spot but I mean okay then you that's okay but if I don't know if you want to enter you could do
110that's true to Chief McNally good evening I'm assuming that's right yes thank you for allowing me to come to the meeting tonight again I came here as a parent and as chief of police I've been doing this for 35 years as a police officer in the town of Kelvin I think I have a little bit of experience in Safety and Security um so I appreciate giving you my insight into safety I feel very strongly about the SRO when that situation came up about funding where I saw that money was the only reason why possibly we weren't having one I funded it that's why it wasn't to put you on the spot it wasn't to make you have to react to me I don't play those games we're talking about the safety of our kids so
111that's where that came from and I went to our town supervisor which wasn't easy to do to get that funding because now I'm taking a resource from the rest of the community and applying it to the school but I feel that strongly about it no I appreciate that I just I was you know making a comment because in I guess my seven years on the board nothing has come so easily with funding so that's why you know I had to point that out usually it's you know debated for a while or there's more push and pull but I think that's great if that is an opportunity that's why I'm saying if this is on the table then I don't want to stop that um it sounds like pretty much everybody else is on board with
112that idea unless there's others who have not spoken yet no I'm not a barrier a barrier to it I just I just want to have all the full the full data but I don't recall like denying anything like this this is the second conversation that we've had on this so if any kind of conversation that happened saying we didn't have funding or there was a request and we said no didn't come from this board it may come from this from the safety security committee I might be thinking that there might not be funds available but it was never presented to us so that's why we're a little bit that's why we're a little bit kind of we're like you know where did it even come from besides conversations you know around election time people had
113a lot of conversations back and forth about responsibility but there's never any denials of it and I think it was conversations happening and this committee that we hadn't heard about yet so This Is Us questioning it as like this is week four now maybe that we've even had a presentation to question so I'm fine questioning it and and pushing just kind of getting answers making people feel comfortable I'm not a barrier to it it's obvious that it would be whether it actually fixes the problem it's gonna make our students feel safer from what I understand and and that's important right so do I think it's really going to fix stopping fighting and things like that I'm not 100 percent sold on one person at the middle school might be able to help that but if
114it makes people feel safe in school then I think that's an important thing to consider and I appreciate that I think we can go backwards though where we had to Sorrows a number of years ago and we did lose one for funding so this funding topic has been around for a while and this topic currently of putting a second one back has been ongoing it's not just a couple of meetings or the last couple of weeks this has been going on for for quite a while but just saying for us for the yeah the heat of us that aren't in there this is kind of a little bit new available I came tonight not to speak to be here to show my support of you so you know who I am if even in a
115side conversation you want to discuss things we remain available to do that as far as the stats when I became Chief we started doing our annual report a little bit differently where we actually calculated into the data the data on SRO and what exactly they do is it is it helping a teacher get a child down a hallway is it walking somebody to their car because they're not feeling safe so all those different topics we're now looking at in our annual report that's documented and it was in our reform groups that we met with so we did about 780 don't hold me to that actual interactions last year in the school that's the first time we had that to look at to all of your point that you have to look to see what we're
116doing is it helping um and there and it can be stopped if it's not working down the road we we stop the program I know it's hard to pull something out of a budget I understand that that's that's anybody else have any well there's okay I'm just gonna follow up on Kelly saying I think that I think the confusion is not us like you're saying I think that there might just be a misunderstanding in the public about how this is the budget process and it's not like we're necessarily saying no to the SRO right now it's just we're not adding the budget line immediately and going forward right now because that's something that I I have heard at least where people are like well you guys are saying no we're like we're not saying no
117we just this is a budget process there's the pilot and then there's adding it to the budget for next year for funding so I think that's the disconnect and that was part of my reason for funding it when we were talking about it because I knew that in April we would make a decision about next September so we would go a whole year without this address so that was part of my decision making as well what happened I mean did you share that with it's on our annual report so it's there but I can break it down by category so that you can better understand what information is there for us absolutely picture of this and how it works because there are a lot not us but not people in the community I think it
118would help you know because we're not in the school so we don't know all the issues that you're dealing with and be I think it'll be make it much clearer I would gladly share that and you did it yeah absolutely it was great well the answer Rebecca's because I kind of have the same question about the mou piece because we voted on this before that you know now well an mou is a memorandum of understanding between two agencies so I think you know Dan and I would have to get together and talk about amending the language but I don't and then I'd have to go back to the town and back to the board so we can talk about that perhaps and I'm not opposed to adding an educational component it's a mandate not just
119a recommendations thank you just before we go on to another topic I I just want to underscore that I feel like our conversation a lot has been that only gilderland is having this problem with heightened issues of behavior and violence and fighting and that is not true I mean every school district around a region the state and Beyond is struggling with students who are exhibiting behaviors the likes of which we have not seen so um I just want to say that because I feel like this conversation is that well gilderland has a problem yes we do but it we are a microcosm of a society bigger picture where there is a bigger problem and we are reflecting that it's not like we're an island of discontent or dysfunction I'm not diminishing the challenges that we
120have but I don't want our community to think that this is a gilderland problem and everyone else is just great because they're not thank you yeah so what are the next steps Dr Wiles if we were to take that upon um the offer on the on the table for the rest of the school year well I think if someone wanted to make a motion we could um so can you make those and can you make the motion make a motion to accept the offer on the table by Chief mcdally as a pilot program right help me out and what else for the balance of the school year for the balance of the school year okay in a second Gloria okay any questions or comments one more um I know you had people in mind for
121this position or that are available we talked about before if there was would be any board involvement and potentially making that selection or giving some input into that selection is that offer still on the table if we move forward with this tonight or how does that how would that work process work I don't want to I don't spot I'm not a professional person for picking police sros but you know I think some people may want to have a little bit I'm not opposed to having a member a part of our committee I just don't want it to delay okay starting the procedure you know it needs to happen pretty soon if that's going to happen I think there was a student that wanted to be involved as well yeah so any other questions or comments
122all in favor it passes 9-0 okay moving on to the next item we are under action items and first we have school business Neil Foundation to approve the resolution to authorized school bus and vehicle Bond proposition for the May 16 2023 school budget vote and election in the amount of one million two hundred and six thousand dollars so I see this is a roll call but first we need to have a motion to accept the resolution to authorize the school bus and vehicle Bond proposition Judy second um Rebecca any questions or comments you said when you're doing your presentation that you needed authorization so you could sign a letter of intent is this going to be enough for him okay just want to make sure all right thank you um okay now I'll turn it
123over to Linda thank you Dr Butterfield aye Mrs duperio hi Mrs Gonzalez Parker aye Mrs person aye Dr Rivera yes Mr saberin yes Mrs slack yes and Mrs tulhill yes Ed this is blasiak says yes too oh I forgot you I'm sorry it's out on the top that's right you say yes Ken yeah okay so it passes mine zero thank you Linda you know for private transportation service contract number three beginning December 12 2022 to Raja Group LLC can I have a motion to approve the private transportation contract Katie's second Blanca any questions or comments all in favor High Pass is my zero next is a resolution regarding the 2019 Capital Improvement project and available funds and it's the Board of Education declaring that the 2019 Capital Improvement project can be accomplished in all material
124respects for less than the estimated total cost and as such hereby authorizes remaining available funds in the amount of 378 795 dollars to be expended on needed heating improvements deemed to be in the best interest of the district can I have a motion to approve the capital Improvement available funds Judy second Gloria any questions or comments was this the one that was talked about business practices with the meeting okay thank you all in favor passes 9-0 next it's a resolution to accept the delinquent tax rules and composite tax collection report for the 2022-2023 school year can I have a motion to accept the resolution to accept Delinquent Tax rolls uh Kelly second Katie any questions or comments all in favor passes 9-0 next is a resolution to approve the agreement with author Brendan Kiley to
125provide three presentations to Gilman high school students on April 4th 2023. can I have a motion to approve the author agreement Gloria second Nate any questions or comments I just want to say thanks to um Brianna Autry for for connecting with the author and I think she coordinated with nisky to have this happen so it's really cool for the students all in favor passes 9-0 uh next is a resolution to approve the agreement with the Mills Law Firm to provide Legal Services can I have approve can I have a motion sorry to approve the retainer agreement uh block a second um Katie any questions or comments okay all in favor passes eight zero with one Ascension next is a resolution to approve the agreement with the College of William and Mary to accept students for
126internship and practicum experience can I have a motion to approve the internship agreement with William and Mary Rebecca II Judy any questions or comments all in favor passes 9-0 finally a resolution to approve the agreements with true now excuse True North K-12 and Upstate applied Behavior Analysis services can I have a motion to approve these two service agreements Kim second Rebecca any questions or comments all in favor passes nine zero great thank you Neil next under board president action I have a list of policies to adopt a through G I think they were all up to read last time for info can I have a motion to approve the set of policies oh yeah I won and we haven't had any policy meetings since then to address that question so can we do this without
127that yeah prevention yeah which one do you remember do you remember which it was the pre-referral intervention policy I think it was four four three two nine just as oh my gosh give me a letter oh here B oh I'm sorry thank you okay so we uh have a motion to approve a uh c d e f g foreign so we're going to go a through G with the exception of B we're pulling B out and B will go back to the policy committee to finish the work and I have a motion to approve those set of policies Kelly second Gloria any other questions or comments all in favor passes around zero great thank you next we have board committee reports Communications Gloria we already haven't met since the last meeting uh we are meeting
128this Thursday I believe Monday sorry and then I wrote this down so I remember one day uh we're gonna meet on December 12th at four o'clock at the deal thank you uh next audit no uh policy and we we're in the process of schedule yeah we're going to do to pull out to schedule the next one how am I forgetting oh business practices we had our presentation from you know cliff uh and we voted on the school bus equipment and that was so that we could lock in a price and also Cliff talked to us about the expenses getting ready for electric buses which he also discussed as well as the vehicle equipment and the frustration of not even being able to get a price or leave a long get a vehicle has slowed down
129what we're doing but we really do need that and he tries to keep that in a rotation much like we do with the buses it's quite the vehicles uh are quite old so that's why we have to get something in there for those thank you Judy um Dei committee um so please anyone you can add um we met last on November 16th we heard reports from the various subcommittees Dr Wiles gave us a report on the superintendent's conference day that had been focused on strategies um to address the recent issues regarding race Dr Wiles also provided an update on the equity audit and the equity learning walks that had occurred um in early November we also discussed our learning collaborative with a focus on self-reflection on our intergenerational identities we talked about the importance of
130having culturally Rich libraries and members of the committee are compiling a personal list of recommendations just to include in a home Library I left anything out next meeting is December 20th at 7. these are due I think they were supposed to be before the next meeting okay great and peace is that the Dei director and different members of the committee will be available at the public library to share information and to take back information from the community so it'll be um and then we'll as we develop more of our book reviews we'll be sharing those out at the library pretty cool I've also noticed the Dei members I don't know if it's just my PTA meeting but they've been zooming in on all the meetings and providing an update to the to the parents uh
131through the PTA meetings which I think is fantastic there's a lot of interest in it yeah engagement yeah it's it's good thank you Rebecca Katie and Kelly and Blanca I guess it's like the combination um those are what's that team report yeah uh those are all the board committee reports public comment number two Lindy did anybody else submit public comment no okay thank you uh board issues ideas and sharing does anybody have any ideas or issues they want to bring up Rebecca question sorry um I know there's been a lot of um parental feedback as well as faculty feedback about the recent lockdown situation that was um erroneous but still happened so I was hoping we could get some some feedback on that so I did um follow up with Mike piscatelli to get the
132bulleted list of things that are happening and so um actually tomorrow um he will be doing a um session during homeroom where students will be able to hear what each of the command sounds like shelter in place lockout lockdown so they're familiar with the sounds and alerts and comfortable with it um Mike also met with faculty and identified that um the issue that you raised making the announcement was was an error and it was a break from our lockdown procedures so going forward even if an alarm is triggered mistakenly we will not make any announcements in classrooms will be unlocked and cleared by the police and District staff so that that was an error they also met with a kitchen staff to ensure that everyone understands the lockdown procedures during lunch which are more complicated
133and then he said that our students need more training so we're in the process of creating a series of training videos for students on lockdown procedures with a special attention to sort of special situations like if you're in the hall if you're outside if you're in the bathroom if you're in the cafeteria um and so though those will be shared soon um and they'll be share um shown in homeroom and discussed prior to the next drill we have three more drills um um we have three more classroom drills and cafeteria drills to do and then I'll just add to that that right before Thanksgiving a team of us met to talk about our system and our training the police department was there com Source was there that's the vendor Who provided our system Mr nooney
134me and a couple others really trying to talk through how is it going so far because a lot of our elementary buildings have had their lockdown drills and the middle school just had theirs and we talked through a number of things on the technical side of the system itself but also on the training side um on December 15th that group will be gathering again with all seven of the principals to do a very detailed debrief of the experience so that we can fine-tune both the system as we learn you know the intricacies of how it works as well as lessons that we've learned on the actual training and the drills so there's really a lot been going on it was a terribly unfortunate thing that happened but we have learned a lot of very valuable
135lessons about our system and our preparedness that we've not would not otherwise have so I persist as The Silver Lining person because it really did provide us with an opportunity to learn some things you know you know when there wasn't danger so lesson learned we'll keep going Blanca so um thank you for that Dr Wiles the only thing that I don't see being addressed is the emotional peace with our students and so like if you look at the thought exchange on our website there are comments about that and one of them is uh you can't hit the wrong button and say sorry it was an accident you scared people and what if it really was a lockdown and you hit the fire drill then so great we have things we're going to do moving forward
136but I can't help but feel like we haven't really circled back to those parents who got what they thought was going to be the last text ever from their kids and the kids who were hiding in the behind drums so I'm just I feel like that piece is missing yeah because we wanted to walk through these steps that I just outlined so that when we're communicating with parents we can be thorough about okay here's what happened here's what we're going to do address the anxiety and fear that that experience caused I know that that will be part of the conversation that happens in the home rooms when they're hearing the various sounds and such so we will circle around but we feel like we wanted finish our homework and then and then communicate out okay
137sounds great thanks I have a positive tangent to that my daughter did a lockdown drill at FMS and I was particularly like critical you know I wanted to make sure everything was done uh well and honestly I think it was done very well um and the teacher did kind of a debrief in addition to the muscle memory and the practicing of hiding she she spoke with them at Great Lengths which I thought was wonderful yes I know I think the drills and other things have been going very well and I know the team right there has been there so thank you any other board issues ideas and sharing and Matt and Sean further service YouTube Chief Merlin and for answering our questions and that was a difficult discussion so um I appreciate you coming out
138and additionally it feels like a partnership which based on what I've read could be unique in some school districts so I do appreciate that partnership and that willingness to work with us foreign I just want to say one last thank you to Neil Sanders yeah I we will miss you [Applause] I now I like really question every semicolon that I used to do not know Neil's Affinity tour semicolons any other board issues ideas and sharing okay can I have a motion to adjourn Kelly second Rebecca all in favor that passes 9-0 thank you everybody