08 Board of Education meeting, 11 15 22

001good evening and welcome to the November 15 2022 Gilman Central School Board of Education meeting would you all please silence your cell phones and stand for the pledge I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign first on the agenda tonight we have several public comments some are in person and some are written in so we'll start in person just a reminder that we keep public comment to three minutes and you can just go right up to the mic we'll start with Rachel Riley [Music] good evening I've been asked to read the following from a member of our community my name is inam Murad I was born in a Muslim family

002in a war-torn country Afghanistan my father and entire family members have worked in the country's Ministry of Education and after my graduation I started to work in the same as analyst and budget Department in 2001 when the United States ousted Taliban from power and a new democratic government was formed I resigned my job from Ministry of Education and started to work for the U.S army as a culture advisor interpreter and translator based on my work my mom dad brothers sisters and all relatives turned against me and my family after 2005 I and my family was not safe anymore our enemies tried to kidnap my children on the way from school my house was set on fire while I was on duty away from home and the enemy tried to break into my house several times

003I had to change my house location time to time but they would find us again and continue to threaten us I never lost courage and continued my job shoulder by shoulder with our Armed Forces but a Time came where there I could not stay in Afghanistan even for another day and we decided to escape to India we left our homeland in 2012. upon the arrival in India we became Christians and we were all involved in ministering to other Afghan people who would visit India for medical treatment tourism or business based on that again we were mocked humiliated stoned and my house was attacked by some anti-christian people in India after long suffering in India we the family was granted special immigrant visas and we came to the United States in 2014. here in the United

004States we are still adjusting to new life we still have not enjoyed our freedom because it is much more challenging for a big family to start from scratch in every aspect of life let alone in security my son Issa Syed was assaulted in Guilderland high school for no reason followed by another attack followed by intimidating text messages and death threats yes we are all exactly threatened and attacked here in the United States as we were once in Afghanistan my family is scared of what if they attack our house my son cannot go out as well as my daughters and I am also mentally alerted and started to use my tactics of survival which I should not because we live in the USA now I am in a condition now where I think where to go

005from here where to hide and where to run the Guilderland High School is now trying to somehow remove my son from school because they are unable to control the situation instead of fixing and controlling they are trying to escape from the problem which I believe is not prudent my question is that how many students will you send home to ease yourself what about the safety of all other students why are we not able to work together to find and eliminate the existing issues how many other students will you have to send home but not even try to understand and resolve the issues fundamentally we need to work together to ensure the safety of our children and their families for the future because what I see now is totally unimaginable thank you Miss Riley next we

006have Rachel Dwyer as many are aware the current state of our high school is not satisfactory I've never heard of a time where teachers fear their students the people they are supposed to help grow as a junior here in Guilderland I have witnessed this fear teachers have transferring right to their students the actions of many have become safety hazards and at many times illegal but people are too afraid to say anything out of fear I should not have to watch my back when I need to use the bathroom however with our current state I have to be fearful the high school being filled with illegal actions and safety hazards is distracting and harmful to mine and my peers education last week I walked into the bathroom to a group of girls sitting in a circle

007vaping with absolutely no fear of getting caught and I and they had the dirt the nerve to judge me sadly this has become normalized no fear of getting caught and no fear of discipline by the end of the day I'm mentally lethargic and not because of my workload but because of the lack of structure and discipline the school has enforced the lack of fear for some has transitioned to an increase in fear of many thank you thank you Mr Dwyer next we have madelina Riley good evening I would like to take this opportunity to thank the board for allowing me to speak about an important topic I'm here today to speak about the need for another school resource officer fights are breaking out very frequently in Guilderland high school and it's very worrying it's uncomfortable

008to walk in the Halls worried if I'm going to see another fight take place it becomes a serious problem when students education is stunted because of violence going on in these very Halls Guilderland high school has become an unsafe learning environment watching a Beatdown take place during lunch and kids start pointing cameras and laughing is a horrible experience I cannot begin to describe I implore the Board of Ed to approve another resource officer well I'm fully aware that a second resource that another resource officer is not the be-all and end-all of a solution I believe it is incredibly is it is an incredible vital step in the right direction to making our halls and school more safe for students who are just trying to get an education thank you for your time thank you Miss

009Riley next we have Kaylee green hello my name is Kaylee green and I'm a junior here at Jason ghs and I'm here to speak to you on a few different topics this evening as a high school student I see the violence here every day and having a brother in the middle school I hear of what's happening there as well the only clear answer to violence is assertive power and actual consequences so like many other here tonight I find a need for more resource officers in our schools hundreds of parents put their children in your hands every day but as the days go by especially for high school the TR their trust in you slips further and further down the drain typically school districts have one resource officer per 1 000 students in the district we

010have one for seven campuses at this time more resource officers are essential to ensuring that all of our schools can be safe you're most likely aware that yesterday an accidental lockdown was called that JHS I would like to address the fact that the way ghs reacted was appalling first the classroom I was in was never opened by a police officer or an administrator why I'm not sure second it was called during block three the block where the high school has lunch hundreds of students were in the lunchrooms and followed no protocol or procedure they just sat there having no clue what to do why isn't their protocol for this and if there is why wasn't it executed third over the loudspeaker it was announced that the lockdown had been an accident and that we were

011in a shelter in place some teachers had their students get up and go back to to learn to their desk and keep learning I know that that's not the protocol for if the building's in a lockdown but why have the administration not kept the teachers up to date and making sure the teachers know what to do my last point is that plenty of students were in the halls or the bathroom at that exact moment and they had not a clue what was going on some of them may have heard faint beeps from close classrooms but there are no speakers in the bathrooms of halt and they didn't have a clear view of the clock so they had no clue what was going on the fact that students did student students didn't know what was going

012on when they heard these beeps shows an error on the end of administration because at the beginning of the school year we weren't briefed on what the each of the beefs each of the different beeping sounds mean I think that the worst part was that other than one email the district hasn't addressed this at all they haven't shown a cleared path forward for forward and keeping for keeping our buildings safe in the future lastly on the topic of violence in the high school every student and staff member at ghs has noticed a spike in the numbers and fights and they increase intentions in our in our high school I came to this school board in this room six months ago expressing the dangers of high school starting so early a lack of sleep caused by

013high school starting before 8 30 has a direct correlation to a drastic increase in violence in schools my dad will be speaking directly on this from a research paper in a little bit I'm aware that there's nothing we can do at this time about it but I would like you to all take a long hard look at the results of that ultimate decision that was made last spring in conclusion to address violence I once again ask you for additional resource officers needed to keep our buildings safe thank you thank you next we have Thomas Green thank you good evening my name is Thomas Green I am a taxpayer and a property owner in the town of Guilderland I have two children in the gilderland school district um Kaylee who's an 11th and my son Joshua

014who is in seventh grade tonight I'll be sharing with you a few excerpts from the aggressive behavior volume 48 issue 3 the research article entitled physiological distress mediates the connection between sleep deprivation and physical fighting in adolescence sleep is a biological process that is essential to Life playing a critical role in brain function and systemic physiology healthy sleep in adolescence has a duration of between 8 and 10 hours per night without long periods awake and a lack of sleep threatens many aspects of development including School commitment General Health and physical safety aggressive behavior is known as a possible outcome of sleep deprivation is a complex Behavior related to many different dimensions including effective cognitive and behavioral expressions in response to stimuli from the external environment the pathway from sleep to Violent behavior is complex and

015the role of mediating factors has not yet been empirically clarified three Paths of influence have been proposed the effective pathway the cognitive pathway and the response control pathway according to the effective pathway lack of sleep increases negative effects this pathway suggests that emotional and Moody States may be the key to explaining how lack of sleep May influence aggressive behavior Studies have shown that poor sleep causes negative emotions with compromised moods lack of sleep frequently increases negative emotional States including fatigue anxiety depression and irritation Disturbed sleep also increases discomfort and pain including sensitivity to them which may motivate aggression lack of sleep could also be related to hostility and aggression because it induces more negative interpretations of other people's behavior than is really the case this illustrates the second cognitive pathway there was also a third

016pathway the response control pathway which implies that impulse inhibition is weakened by lack of sleep which in turn impacts cognitive response control processes and complex decision making performance we can't go back and change the past we cannot correct our mistakes in this life but what we can do is bring the resources that are necessary to get this problem under control and the only way we can do that now is through discipline and we must hire more school resource officers to accomplish this thank you thank you Mr Green we have three public comments that were sent to us and so I'll read them in the order that they were sent first one says Dear Gilliland Board of Education members hello my name is Katie Lynn my husband and I along with our three children moved to

017Guilderland from Albany just over four years ago our oldest child 15 is a sophomore at ghs our middle child 11 is a sixth grader at FMS while our youngest child a is a third grader at Pine Bush this past summer I attended all three in-person open houses as I walked the halls of the high school during open house I was amazed about how massive about how both how massive and spread out the building is my thoughts then shifted to a building of this size with this many students teachers coaches custodial workers administrators Etc has only one school resource officer one gilwin board members we must do better surrounding school districts held multiple school resource officers multiple yet we only have one one school resource officer to cover seven schools let's all think about that for

018a minute one school resource officer to seven School doesn't seem like a safe or reasonable ratio to me I'm not going to go on and on about why we need more officers I think we all know why however I will say it is extremely disappointing that our school district will not financially support another resource officer I would be curious to know where funds are allocated that are deemed more important and necessary than the safety of our children and employees of our school district I'm confident in saying that I'm the one I'm one of many residents in this District who feel passionately about our school safety so to the members of the Gilman Board of Education myself and many others in our community are strongly asking for consideration for the approval of another school resource officer

019to say this is a must is an understatement I thank you for your time and consideration in this extremely serious matter Katie Lynn the next public comment reads to the Gillen Board of Education and Dr Marie Wiles I am emailing to provide a public comment for the upcoming board meeting on Tuesday November 15th I understand there's going to be a discussion regarding adding an extra SRO to the district as a parent of two beautiful kids I felt all the feelings that other families in the district surely must be feeling and I understand the desire to feel like we are doing something to protect our children while they are at school there's not a single day that goes by that I don't wonder if it's the last time I'll see my children when putting them on

020the bus or dropping them off at school in the morning I like to draw the board's attention to the National Education association's post from April of this year by James Patterson titled making schools safe and just and she probably provided a link there in particular I found this part of the Nea post to be relevant to Tuesday's discussion quote over the last two decades School in the u schools in the U.S have increasingly employed sros often from local police department their numbers have grown dramatically driven by school shootings in a sense that students are too unruly in 1975 only one percent of U.S schools reported having sros but that number Rose to about 36 percent by 2004 and to 58 by 2018 including 72 percent of high schools these increases are due in large part

021to more than one billion in federal funding for sros yet research shows that sros do little to reduce on-campus violence or mass shootings and their presence is often damaging to students of color and students with disabilities having sros in schools can actually create higher rates of Behavioral incidents and spikes in suspensions expulsions and arrests as a parent I am concerned about the mental health and physical safety of all students in the district I believe that many students would feel uncomfortable with an added law enforcement presence in the schools while some students and families may feel safer with the next with an extra SRO other students and families may feel the opposite I would also like to draw the board's attention to this New York Times article and this Texas House of Representatives report I believe

022that the district has already implemented all of the appropriate safety measures that it can to protect our children adding an extra as a role will not add to the safety of the students in the schools and it potentially could lead to situations where our already marginalized students have to endure further negative experiences best Sarah Kate Cantor the third public comment High Board of Ed and Dr Wiles I am writing as a concerned member of the gillowand community and want to express my concern regarding adding another adding more school resource officers to Children schools my primary concern is that not all members of the community feel reassured at the site of an SRO there have been numerous studies over the past 40 years some of which I have cited at the end of this letter that

023demonstrate that sros have not been proven to make schools safer what these Studies have demonstrated is that marginalized students experience higher levels of anxiety stress and feel less safe when sros are present additionally in schools with SRO students of color are more likely to be expelled suspended or arrested my second concern is the added cost of an SRO the money spent on an SRO would be better served in adding another school counselor teacher teacher's aide or a coach that would directly benefit students reduce a class size or offer additional resources for students my last concerns are the bigger systemic issues that adding an SRO would not resolve the most recent example was a poorly executed lockdown drill at the high school on Monday this apparently caused stress to many students and staff there were numerous

024reports of breaking protocol naming namely by a vice principal other examples of the poorly planned themed days and reports of racism that the Dei committee has been dealing with since its Inception when making the decision on whether or not to add an SRO please take into account all members of the community and not just the louded voices the loudest voices that repeatedly ask for another SRO with no concrete justification for their ask sincerely Tony Rivera Linda do we have other public comments that came in no all right so most of these public comments have to do with um the safety and answer Rose which is first on the agenda after public comment would have a program report about SRO so I think it'd be appropriate to let the presentation happen then we can have a

025discussion do you have one more public comment can you come up to the mic so people at home can hear and just say your name hi my name is Brooke Snyder I am a junior attending Gildan High School I wanted to come tonight and express my concern for our school and student body as a whole this year is very different from others for me in regards to my safety and failure to focus and do school with everything that has been going on recently for students school should be a place where kids feel safe and able to learn without any distractions school should not be somewhere where you have to be worried about constantly going into Sheltering places or lockdowns dude how out of hand a portion of the student body has come to as a

026student at ghs I cannot confidently say I feel safe to be in school I've dealt with personal bullying and harassment each day I can't sit and lunch with my back to the door out of fear of another altercation I'm scared to walk in the hallways alone because of the continuous fights among the students I'm being forced to walk certain ways to classes because the numerous hallways are being blocked off due to protests inside the building being held during school time there is barely a week that goes by without a fight or some sort of altercation at school I come home from school almost every day with news stories to tell my parents about fights protests and numerous shelter and places I never thought I'd be at a point in my life where I'm walking into

027school being scared wondering what's going to happen today and praying it doesn't get worse than it already has my learning and ability to focus in school is being affected by all this going on and I feel a lot of other students and members of the school Community would agree thank you thank you Miss Snyder so we'll go on to the program report oh what's that oh can you just say your name at the mic thanks hi my name is Elizabeth Shaffer and I'm a junior at Guilderland High School I wanted to speak from a personal experience from last week that I had I was walking into school late because of a doctor's appointment I was unable to get in right away like normal because of a protest going on I was yelled at and verbally

028harassed by people attending the protests that I am normally friendly with I was disgusted by the chaos that I was witnessing and nothing being done about it I am concerned about me and my peers education because it is affecting the what we have worked so hard for learning so many years up to this point in our life getting into college and it's a oh sorry it's affecting our learning and ability to learn at the highest um sorry at the highest point we can thank you are there any other public comments okay so we'll go on to the presentation about um school resource officers and I think a lot of the questions that I think people have and we can take from the community as well can happen after the presentation seems to make more sense

029that way so I'll turn it over to Dr Wiles okay thank you Dr Rivera good evening everyone tonight we have an overview of what our school resource program is all about we also have a number of members from the gilderland police department who are with us tonight who will be helping me win the Q a portion of the presentation tonight and I also want to recognize our building principles and other administrators who are in the back of the room to also assist so let me uh get started here and I'm going to start with what the mission of the school resource program school resource officer program is all about and it's basically two major areas and the first is to promote school safety by building a positive school and climate where every last person feels

030safe and students are supported to succeed a lot of what we've heard tonight already and the other part of the mission for the resource officers really to seek to reduce violent crime committed by and against the youth in our committee a community and how do they do this um well lots of different ways Beginning by supporting a safe secure and orderly learning environment for students teachers and staff importantly by establishing a trusting channel of communication with students and parents and teachers by serving as a positive role model to help instill in our students good moral standards good judgment discretion respect for other students in a sincere concern for the quality of our school community and they also can provide information and resources to our to our community members through our students and our parents and

031as I listen to the impassioned comments from everyone today and um kind of the tone that I've heard so much in last days um these these words resonate um so um I want to take a step back and provide a little bit of a history of our SRO program here in Guilderland it actually goes back to August of 1999 that is when the board of education at the time made approved a recommendation to establish an on-site SRO um and then in January 2006 as we were kind of digging through our archives we we learned that the superintendent of time actually did some additional uh Research into um school resource programs but no additional change happened after that immediately until January in 2009 and it was at that point that the board approved the recommendation to

032hire a second SRO so during that time we had an SRO assigned to gilderland high school and also to Farnsworth Middle School and then in April um of 2012 this was really the height or perhaps the depth of tremendous financial difficulties for Guilderland but really across the state and Nation we ended up decreasing our Sr Pro SRO program um back down to one SRO who was housed at that time at Guilderland high school and this is the model that we we still have today a couple more history points so last March 2022 our school board approved the memorandum of understanding with the Guilderland Police Department which um really frames what our current problem project program looks like and really is the foundation of the points I'm making today many of these ideas come right from

033that memorandum of understanding um and then shortly thereafter the town of Guilderland also approved the um mou so following that our we have a school district Safety and Security committee um that I want to just take a detour and talk about just a little bit um we've had this committee for a number of years now and um I just I know um there's some interest who's on this committee what kind of work do they do and so I just want to take a minute to talk about that the committee is led by our school safety specialist That's Tim Murphy who we work with through Capital Region BOCES our facilities director Cliff nooney is on that committee our SRO and members of the Guilderland Police Department join that committee regularly our head of technology is on

034the committee our communication specialist is on the committee we also have a parent rep a board of education representative a teacher representative uh three principals one at the high school middle school and Elementary and then the district office team is there as well this group meets periodically we were actually met yesterday morning and the kinds of topics that we work on um are the safety elements for our Capital construction projects currently we're looking at Anonymous notification or a tip line for our school district we've looked at threat assessments we talk about safety training and drills for a long period of time we talked about our pandemic response um we work on our district levels safety plan so this committee really deals with all of the elements that we talk about around school safety and one

035of them was our SRO program and last year the larger Committee created a smaller committee a subcommittee to look more deeply into um the possibility of expanding our SRO program and many of the individuals who I just mentioned were part of that subset there were about eight or ten people I think Matt pinchina from our Dei work was on the committee [Music] um and I think one of our assistant principals also joined us as well Brian Mazza and I think Jackie Vandenberg was sitting in the back she was on that committee as well so we met a few times over the summer and Chief Dan McNally joined us for our discussions as well and at the conclusion of our conversations and our discussions the subcommittee recommended the idea that we do exactly what we're doing

036right now which is to bring the idea to the Board of Education the idea of expanding our SRO program so that's really their work is before you right now so one of the things that I thought would be helpful is to give a little bit of comparative data we often compare ourselves on any number of measures with other school districts in the Suburban Council so what I've prepared here is a the results of the survey I did with my colleagues about a month ago and I have not used District names because nobody likes it when we use our names but I looked at the data here and organized Us by enrollment so you'll see in the far left column total School District enrollment the smallest School District in the group was 2400 students and the

037largest was 95. I also asked about number of buildings within the school district and you can see the smallest is five and the largest is 17. and then over to the right you see the number of sros that various districts have with a low being zero uh in the high being the two largest districts at the bottom who each have three um here we are sort of uh toward the bottom third in terms of size here we have 4 850 students seven um buildings and we have the one SRO so there really isn't a lot of consistency across the the numbers of districts who responded here but we are not out of the ordinary so I want to talk a little bit more about the goals of the program the ultimate one is to ensure

038a place where people feel safe to to learn and to work um we want to prevent and reduce prevent potential harm related to incidents of school violence we really want to focus on a positive School climate based on respect for all children each and every child and each and every adult in the in the school and then we want to work on Partnerships with behavioral and health and other care providers so we can support students and families beyond our school walls as well so how do we go about fostering positive School climate and crime prevention it's largely about relationship building we talk a lot about how our SRO builds relationships with the students and the adults within our building in order to prevent problems sros also participate in a variety of activities to help build

039that open climate and culture of trust getting to know students serving as a role model and then being able to identify students who might need additional resources to be successful in school and then there's a crime prevention element of this as well and it includes a variety of things foot patrols checking that our doors are locked watching the cameras to make sure there are nothing worrisome going on in our Halls moderate monitoring previous crime locations helping investigate crimes and assisting with analysis of the physical safety of our school buildings and Facilities so there's a law enforcement element of all of this so sros are responsible for the majority of law enforcement activities occurring at the school during school hours but not and this is really important not General School discipline the code of conduct is

040the work of the school administrators to to um to manage and there is uh the determination of whether an activity Rises to the level of law enforcement is made in consultation with our school officials our SRO and our school officials talk all the time and alternatives to arrest should be used whenever it's possible there is a huge educational portion to all of this and we strive and I think achieve having our SRO become a member of our educational team yes they represent the law enforcement Community but they are part of the fabric of what we do here so they engage in informal conversations they engage in formal class presentations so our our students know our SRO our faculty know our SRO they're part of the learning process and then working to be proactive in creating

041opportunities for learning to happen um and to we like to leverage the SRO as a resource the way I like to think about it is an emphasis on the r less than the O more on the resource side of of the work of our SRO so here are the basics to enforce criminal law and protect student staff and public at large against criminal activity to Foster mutually respectful relationships with students and staff provide information to provide classroom instruction on a variety of topics and to coordinate investigative procedures between the police and school officials when there are law enforcement issues a couple more to handle initial police reports of crimes on campus to take enforcement action on criminal matters when appropriate after consultation with our school officials attend our special events prepare lesson plans and then

042collect data on the activities that that happen so there's a lot to it for sure so the um PowerPoint is hard to capture what this really looks like and feels like in the halls of our school so um one of the recommendations of that subcommittee who met over the summer was is there a way we can capture what having an SRO in our school looks like and so um that's what this does genuinely cares about students and wanting to make the school and Community a better place he talks to kids he gets a real pulse on the community what's going on trying to build those relationships with kids so that they feel like they have another person who's on their team it's such a big disconnect between law enforcement and and people and trying to

043change that so it's gaining that trust with that student it's just being that other trusted adult where they come to me with their problems and I've seen that since I started these warm saw in my day up even when I'm having a bad day or just overthinking about something I was having lunch when they just came up felt so comfortable felt safe I mean someone that he's there for us I just love them the important thing is that they're seen as a resource one of the things that Sean has done here with us he's taught our fifth grade dare program for several years good morning my friends when the school resource officer comes in and talks to our students and just answers questions any that they have one of the things he says is I'm

044available at any time stop in and see me that position is invaluable to us at the high school just have an outlet for students someone for them to talk to we work really hard on making sure students have at least one adult member that they feel comfortable with and for some students that's Sean Ralston that's the school resource officer there's definitely kids who feel more comfortable going to him than you know any other teacher you know walk by his office and see if he's in there and you can pop in and say hello he brings me peace he's like a friend you've come to him anything I just really like having him here he makes me feel safer we have such a big school district and the school's big and he can only be in

045one place at one time so if we we could definitely benefit from another I know we can't have a school resource officer in every single school but if we had one or two more where we can kind of be in that area for those students the disappointing thing about the school resource officers that he has to be shared with seven buildings we have a lot of needs we have growing needs over the last few years we need extra help a couple more slides and we'll open up to questions so um here's the proposed plan that's really up for discussion so the Guilderland police have offered to assign an officer to serve as an SRO at Farnsworth Middle School for the balance of the school year that we are in right now so 22-23 without charge

046but going forward as part of our budget development process for 2324 the district would then go ahead and plan to fund an additional SRO again working with the Guilderland Police Department and the estimated cost um for 20 23 24 is fifty six thousand dollars so with that happy to take questions um I will lean heavily on our friends in the audience to come to the mic if there are questions directly for GPD or for our principals but let me open it to questions to the board go ahead first okay I mean I think we can open it up to maybe the community first and then I know other people have questions so you can just come up to the mic so I have a question regarding the Safety and Security committee so obviously this committee

047it sounds like it's um really based on keeping students safe like as a Safety Committee so I was wondering you mentioned all these wonderful people at that have been attending this um these committee meetings and um these like these people that seem to really have an influence in our school district but since it's regarding the safety mostly of our students and obviously teachers too but I was wondering why we don't have a student representative on this committee as it can provide student like the student's position and how they would feel and how they are feeling safe and I was wondering if you would be like opposed to having a student representative on this absolutely not I think school districts are given some guidance on who needs to be on their school district Safety Committee but

048I don't think it would preclude that and I think that's a terrific idea other questions I'll turn it to the board and if other people have questions just raise your hand and you can come up to them like oh you have a question um so I just like if all the adults like speak on the topic like what about the students who go here like I just think if like adults are speaking about like safety within the students they're just hearing about it from their kids like I think if more like I agree with what Rachel said like if more people could I just think more like students speaking about the topic would give you more of like a reason to like believe that we do deserve another SRO officer because I think if just

049adults hear stories from their students like it's not really fair to us because like I mean during the lockdown situation like I felt unsafe but like I just think like adults don't like adults giving letters and recommendations like isn't the same as like students so I just like don't know why students like don't speak about it more I don't know my name is Melissa Schaefer I have three children in the gilderland school district one in the high school who is a junior one who will be entering high school next year as a freshman and one who is in fifth grade right now excuse me Linwood um I just find it to be absurd that on a daily basis my kid is coming home and saying oh yeah there were two more fights today Mom one

050with a weapon one without I watched a kid buy some weed right in the middle of class today the sub was completely oblivious oh someone else got milk today in School Mom it's just absurd to me they showed me a video of a of one of their friends walking next to a principal in the hallway and just was smacked right right across the face full you know Full Throttle one man cannot keep you know 4 000 kids safe it's it's absurd to me we really need to know what's going on he can't you know know what's going on in every building at all times um and and you know unfortunately there are a lot of kids that are taking advantage of that and I feel that based on what my children have told me and

051their friends um they're scared they're the teachers are scared so you know my daughter has worked very hard academically athletically to get her to a good place in life for college um and yet we've had to hire tutors she has extra work you know because the teachers aren't allowed to teach to their full potential to the kids that are here to learn and and you have a huge percentage of kids that are here to learn not to worry about getting milked in the cafeteria watching their buddy get smacked in the hallway watching a weed deal go down to math class you know it's it's absurd to me you know people move to Guilderland with the idea that this is a wonderful community and great place to raise your children and this year has just really

052opened my eyes to some some things that that are not so so thank you for your time there's another hand over here the question hi I'm Savannah I'm a senior at Guilderland high school I'm also a student representative on the Dei board so I see some familiar faces I just had a question regarding the SRO hiring will you guys be taking into account gender because I know our current SRO is um a male and I think it'd be really important to take into account of whether you would be hiring a female or a male because obviously it's um it's really like unfortunate to say that their difference between female safety and male safety and I was just wondering if you guys would be open to hire or open to hiring a female officer because I

053think a female officer would be really beneficial to the female identifying and also even non-binary identifying population because there are differences so thank you no you're that's great Savannah thanks for being here tonight um we're I'll speak for myself when I say that what we hope for in an SRO is someone who can connect with their kids um you know officer ralston's been terrific doing that and uh we part we would play part of the role in selecting the SRO the other part would be largely done by the Guilderland Police Department so maybe I'll put one of the police officers Mr maybe Chief McNally on the spot here to to offer some insight into the process by which sros are selected and thank you for inviting us to talk tonight this is great so in

054our selection for any officer we look for the the best educated the best fit for that position we don't generally look at race sex we look at the very best officer but I do take into consideration that question about having a female officer there um just like when we try to do our selection for officers based on the demographics of our community to try to be respect uh you know aware of that situation so that we get the right people so again I try not to select by race or sex the very best person we're going to include the school with information on what we're selecting or who we're selecting and have them come in and be a part of our interviewing process I'm not opposed to having a student on that committee as well

055to come in to help with that selection process I hope I answered your question go ahead yeah so my question is if the students are telling you how unsafe they feel and in my experience if there's something that needs to be fixed you find the budget for it if your child needs extra help academically you find a budget for a tutor if these kids are feeling scared to enter their classrooms or to just enter the school building where this is a place of learning and safety why aren't we making sure that we can keep them safe so I think we have other questions we're going to ask regarding that specifically about the process of hiring or what the district wants to do but I don't know if you have more specific question for the the

056police in the back or for Dr Wiles I think we'll probably address your question as as we talk about it there's another hand okay over here just quickly I think to Dr Weils about funding because as we know it always comes down to money and I don't know can't believe we're all here talking about finding money to keep our kids alive and safe and unharmed where we are we found money the part of the turf field somehow but yet we're going to discuss to make sure we can find money to keep our kids safe so I guess to Dr Wilde what research has the board done to all the federal funding out there right now because there's millions and billions of it to helping us to get this done um not a ton to be

057totally honest with you and the but I'm happy to look at what Grant funds are available for us here in Guilderland if that could be a possibility for us that'd be terrific so I think we're not really at the budget discussion place yet um you know we're just in the very beginning of the 23-24 budgeting process we've got the thought exchange out there right now collecting input from folks but I think that's a great Avenue and if you have some particular places for us to start please send me an email with you know the agencies or the organizations that would would fund us that would be terrific thank you so my question would be I personally I'm in favor of additional sros but I respect that not everybody is in the same position or feels

058the same way so my question would be for the those who are not comfortable supporting an additional SRO what I think we've established tonight is that there is a great deal of concern about the safety in the school the kids are concerned the parents are concerned so for those people who are not in favor of additional SRO and it would be very helpful for the public to understand what plans you do have in place because the current situation is not working and if and and one SRO is very essential but is not going to solve the cultural issues or all the problems that we have so I it would be very helpful to also know for the people that are opposed to an SRO or don't see that as the solution what is the solution

059it's something that definitely needs to be addressed whether we go the SRO direction or not well thank you my first question is am I able to ask the members of the board a question how many of you on the board have children that are currently in an elementary school middle school or high school here at gilderland okay folks in the audience I'm sure we all do that's why we're here please be honest in your response at any point during the day that you know your children are at school when they leave to take the bus to school or you're dropping them off even it's for a fraction of a second do any of you who have children in the district for one second think my children might be In Harm's Way there's your answer okay

060I have a question oh go ahead Matt I'm bored um in anticipation for today's meeting everybody knew it was going to be a heated discussion not really heated but one way or the other has any of the board members reached out to anyone to do our own research in-house to see how effective our current SRO program is has anyone spoken to anyone administrators students teachers so my my question I was going to ask tonight because this is is the first time the Safety Committee has brought it to the board so my question was to ask that I know there's a couple right maybe officially to the board but this has been a conversation that all board members are aware of oh yeah several months for sure but we are not allowed to do like you

061can't collect anybody we're not allowed to deliberate the if it's not in public so this was you know maybe a couple conversations here and there but we're not supposed to deliberate or talk about it if it's on a lot of people seem to do research on National studies and get data from the SRO studies but like we really need to look in-house like what works for us and what doesn't yeah this is what's really bothering me and and I love this presentation but what I've been seeing there was any of the counter studies about it especially concerning students uh a color non-weight students and a lot of the rise in the tension over the last month raise it stems from racial tensions that students are telling us have been here for years and my concern

062is if it's been here for years and we have an SRO program that's supposed to be dealing with this why hasn't it been dealt with that's that's for my concerns that's my primary concern right now you said just my own personal response to that is that this has been an issue in society for years and just recently it has spiked as well as here in our school buildings so but that doesn't answer my question you're right it's a direct relation to what's happening in our society so we have to address it here as well as Society has to address it well I mean racial tensions is not like at this that's not something that just arose in the last six months you know what I mean I mean what we're what the students are telling

063us and that's all we get to go I don't have to do a nice right so what let me finish my question what they're telling us is this racial tensions that has that that now have not erupted in the last four weeks because of the incident at the football game has been around for years why hasn't it been addressed or identified prior to the last four weeks I can't comment on that because I haven't been the SRO here I've been here to support I don't know what they've been working on the last school year the food and I and I wanted I can't remember who asked the question one of the I think it was you Rachel I asked a question about what we would do and that that's kind of what I want to

064get to is if look we we are we're in the 2012 budget question right money has to be tight why don't we do something where we can address it rather than get an SRO when the studies the counter studies say the reason with the pro like the National Association of school psychologists don't recommend escrows because it affects primarily affects the increased policing in school primarily affects students non-weight students and we are dealing with a racial tension issue that we've been told it's been here for years and our response is to add another SRO when the studies say that's not a good choice so that's that's where my conflict is and I'm just letting everybody know that's what my copy okay yes absolutely am I allowed it also if if we are expecting our sros to

065fix a problem that's been in this district for a long time then we're already in trouble I agree because I don't believe that we're looking to add an SRO because of a racial issue going on right now and I I know you didn't specifically say that that's why but we literally have students sitting here telling us they don't feel safe we have students coming home and I have a high schooler at the high school they bring their friends home we hear the stories like I get the text messages during the day my son texts the principal if there's a shelter in place because he needs it lifted because he gets worried they're telling us they don't feel safe I understand their studies and things like that but we that's not going to affect like the

066racial issues going on that's something in addition to an SRO that we need to handle I think we need to keep that separate because if we're expecting them to fix something we're in trouble but you can't be separate when the studies are saying that increased another SRO or increased policing in schools negatively affects students of color so what you're doing you're saying we get racial tensions let's add an SRO now an SRO is not going to stop violence in schools we've seen plenty of that incidence in the world right now it's unfortunate that we do but the idea that an SRO is going to stop a school shooting or stopping high level of violence in schools is a myth if we asked the students what they think the students who are butt in seat every

067day who are petrified to walk I hear what they're saying I don't think can you let me let me I hear Let I hear what you're saying you feel do not feel safe in schools I hear them I appreciate that but what I'm saying is adding a single SRO who's going to be at the middle school anyways is not going to solve that issue we got issues that we need to deal with at a council level and we've got to talk about so ask questions he doesn't speak for me every I got a feeling I knew this was coming so let's go but you just said I think a lot of what Dr wiles's presentation with thing is and to Sean ralston's video and the folks that were interviewed in the video we know it

068might not stop violence hopefully it helps but it's also growing a relationship with the students to the officers or the resource as Dr wiles would like to emphasize on the resource so I would much rather have a child feel comfortable going to whether it's Sean Ralston or whomever we get whether it's at the middle school or another one here hopefully next year we want our children to feel safe to go to these resource officers and say I heard this might happen this person scares me that's at least setting an alert to them about what might come so we want our children to feel safe talking to these people my daughter is right over there in the red she texted me yesterday oh my blurp g we just went in lockdown as a parent I probably

069went 10 shades of white and thought oh dear God here we go and again what I asked about 10 minutes ago I bought a lot of these parents in this room have that same gut reaction when their child texts them there's a shelter in place there's a potential lockdown here we go okay we need to let our students feel comfortable speaking to adults on the board principals counselors coaches custodial workers I've been an eight-year-old son who tells me he speaks to the custodial worker at his elementary school he watches kids dump food on the floor and he's comfortable saying to the custodial worker can I help you pick that up that's something I've instilled in my son we want to instill our children to feel comfortable speaking to people in a higher level that they

070can hopefully nip what is going on around here and I just want to say one more thing and then I'll stop Dr Wells had the slide up from 2012 one resource officers what we went down to we had one then we had two we're back down to one that's 10 years ago how much has our student population grown in 10 years okay and then I don't know if it's possibly you or Mr Green asked about have funds been explored and you were very transparent and said not very much in 10 years we still have one resource officer we have to do better I'm one of the letters that you initially read as a public comment we have to do better thank you this is probably the beginning of a bigger discussion um we didn't you

071know didn't set it up like a discussion so we can go back and forth I have questions I know other board members have questions so I'll just start with one and I'm sure other people can jump in with other questions because it's been mentioned about having an SRO here at the high school and I know that the plan from my understanding is if there is another SRO to be added it would be at the middle school so I'm just asking if Mike or somebody else could speak to the issues that would be addressed or that I guess the the like what do you need the needs that are not being met at the middle school that a national role would be um helping with just because we have not had this discussion in public yet

072so I think everybody who has these questions would like you know this out there thank you Dr Rivera I appreciate the opportunity to address the boards on this question um here's how I see it um a school resource officer is another resource for the Middle School to support uh Empower our students to be safe be respectful and to make sure that their mental health and wellness is where it needs to be it all boils down to relationships in this work so it takes a special individual who is in the role of an SRO in order to do that especially at the middle level developmentally so I'm excited to be at least invited to the table with the chief and as they recruit for future this year whoever is assigned to the middle school I believe

073would be a familiar face which we already have a relationship with they already have relationships with kids so I think it would be beneficial to help meet some of the needs that we have our behavioral challenges are a little bit different than the high school's challenges developmentally different however we have seen an uptick in some of our disruptive behaviors we have seen an uptick in some of our instances of physical fights things like that that happen at the middle level having an officer on site would help us facilitate Solutions I'm looking at it more from a lens of right now the reality is is my access to the one SRO is a reactive access something happens I need assistance from GPD I call our SRO to be perfectly honest this year due to the activity

074that's been happening up here a lot of times Sean will say listen can you reach out to officer stalmer or officer hanslik or or you know because I'm dealing with something already up here so evidenced by that I would say an additional officer that we could deploy would be beneficial for some of the things that were juggling as principles located at the middle school I think there's a benefit to westmere and Guilderland Elementary from a proximity standpoint we would have a law law officer housed at our building who could more quickly get to those campuses as opposed to Sean who would have to travel from the high school so I also think there's a value-added benefit for our elementary colleagues on that side of town okay thank you thank you Mike yeah do other any

075other questions thank you thank you so I have other questions but I think other people on the board so I'll give the opportunity to other board members too sure go ahead hi uh my name is Blanca Gonzalez Parker for those of you who don't know me I'm on the SRO subcommittee and on the district Safety and Security committee I am in favor of hiring an SRO if not two and um the reason for that is that we have studied it not only as a part of my degree for public health but we studied that as a committee before we formed the subcommittee I feel like it's an informed recommendation with regard to your question slash comment Nate this is not going to fix racial tensions if you're asking why if we've had an SRO for

076two decades we still have racial tensions I think that's an unfair question what is going to fix racial relations it's a part of a puzzle it's a really important part of that puzzle and frankly we haven't grown or assisted the program that we began in 1999 if anything we've taken away from it we've given one SRO more work and we haven't we haven't put any money into it we haven't it hasn't reached its full potential and so this step this having one full-time resource officer here at the high school could potentially help it could help but you have to be open-minded enough and be um fair with the expectations is the SRO hiring going to solve racial relations no it's not but that's not fair to ask oh it's so it's so sounded like that

077study show that increased and increased police presence within school has a negative attack on students of color so my my concern is we're dealing with racial tensions that's what the studies tell us why would we take that step when we could take the money that we use and uh reduce class size at the middle school thereby kids that are already on The Fringe who already feel disenfranchise aren't pushed farther out because there are increased class sizes smaller class sizes smaller chords take that money get more people that can talk to our students and listen to them it doesn't have to be an SRO to answer your question they can talk your son stocks to the custodian get some counselors in there get people who can talk to our students who they feel comfortable that aren't

078disenfranchised by by an SRO again we are at the appropriate ratios for social workers and a school psychologists is it ridiculous what the ratio is yeah absolutely but we are way under I'm sure it's not a ratio thing for me my concern is the police presence as compared to using a counselor to it at some level or getting people who can come in I think you just hit the nail on the head that's the problem and SRO is not just a police officer needs maybe you weren't listening to the presentation what I saw was an officer wearing a gun and a bulletproof vest if that's all you see it as and you're not listening to the whole person that's not what I'm saying you're not trusting the Safety and Security committee I I my concern

079was that the Safety and Security committee didn't look into negative or at counter that's not fair to say because you're not on the committee you don't know that that's not what I'm saying Blanca what I'm saying is I didn't hear anything about it where you're addressing those concerns now if you did that that's fine tell me that but that's not what I'm seeing in the presentation our job is to tell you about our SRO here and as far as we know there haven't been racial issues reported with the students but I think I have assumed and the SRO but I have a similar question so because we are not we are not privy to what the Safety Committee already uh reviewed and I'm not opposed to an SRO but I have a lot of questions

080and I think I would be doing due diligence to ask the questions I'm going to ask the questions one of the questions I have is have you looked at when you say that you've your your committee has done the research done the research to support I'm sure there's research that shows both sides so I'm wondering did the committee have a balanced conversation and think about what concerns their parent representative was um pretty verbal about finding studies that indicate the opposite and so what we decided to do is also to focus on what's Happening Here at the school and what has happened in the past so yes and and honestly I shouldn't be the only one answering these questions Marie is there um it would be beneficial to have whoever is on that Safety Committee either

081present to us provide us with what they've done because we have not seen anything except today um besides you know just little discussions here and there and we're not supposed to look you know deliberate the topic until we're in public so I don't know if that can be arranged Dr Wiles whoever else is on the Safety Committee but you know clearly this is not going to be a one-time discussion you're looking for a SEMA something that says that uh Inc that adding an SRO will definitely not to make sense it will definitely not I mean I want transparency to what there is transparency and I don't like the suggestion that there isn't all right yes that is the students are since racial tensions who showed up here tonight we did not know any of this

082was going on at all like none of us have a say in this and I think if you're asking students about their safety they should be the first people you ask I don't think that parents you guys I'm sorry but like I don't think you know how like scared we are in school like I really don't think you do because like the other day when I was in my lockdown I mentioned it previously I just shaking it's like shaking because I did not know if it was a drill or not like that is a safety problem that you guys that don't understand because you're not us and I think if you like were to let us like explain I have a perfect group with the SRO officer I think you saw in the video many

083of us do I don't think it's just a resource like it's not just like a person it's just it's like it's like a like a person you can go to it's not not just like someone that's there that you're scared of that you said we were scared of I'm not scared of him I don't think any of them are I think we all spoke about being like grateful that is here Dr Wiles um if that was actually the first question on my list did anybody talk to student groups for their input or feedback about the SRO program in general about I know we've heard about safety but was there any kind of thought exchange or survey Etc given out to students not a formal one no I mean we have the thought exchange going on

084right now and I think there's quite a bit of activity around the SRO yeah right but we we can't we can't say that you're representing all the student body I think it's fair to give an opportunity for all students that was the top of my my list is did anybody talk to students group student groups for their feedback or input and there have been other times where we've asked if it's through student government to get the you know whatever tool or instrument they're using to get out there that way we actually give opportunities for the you know middle and high school students to give us feedback which I think it sounds like it hasn't been done um I don't know if that's something that either you or the Safety Committee or in combination could do

085but I think that would be really helpful to hear from the students in that sense too beyond the ones that are here in person but I think it's great that you came in person and are advocating um so I don't think any formal processes happening are um one of the micro Mikes can tell me otherwise we will get that thought exchange out tonight to the student body it'll be open through next we'll still have plenty of time to weigh in and this section is just for students so we can hear exactly what's on there okay I have other questions other people have questions Rebecca go ahead each other but one is you really emphasize in your presentation that sros are not involved in school discipline and we've heard a lot about school safety and I

086really appreciate the students coming out and being brave enough to speak but I'm not really sure how if sros are not involved in in school discipline how that would impact what they're experiencing like in the lunchroom or what you're sort of what they've described to us tonight um so I may turn to our SRO to answer this but the the um the role of the SRO is far more about building relationships with students create a positive um climate and culture monitoring Behavior along the lines of our code of conduct is is not the job of the police department that's the job of our principals in our um if there are incidents when the behavior crosses the line from this is just a code of conduct to something that is in the line of police work

087that's where the SRO will assist um but I I believe I mean I'm thinking in my 12 years here I can't think of a time when an SRO arrested a student um because we're trying to build a relationship we're trying to help make a connection between how the police department is a helping force a resource in our community and not a body to be feared but rather one that helps you know helps make us all feel safe so it's you know it's kind of a it's a bit of a dance that's why the there's a couple bullets in the presentation where they talk about conversations about criminal activity are done in consultation with the school district so I don't know if someone from GPD West away in on that Sean if you do because you

088you live this every day so on an everyday basis I had to every single kid for not having a pass or discipline them for doing something wrong I'm not going to be that trusted adult for them they're not going to come to me and tell me that one of these students is going to get jumped tomorrow for this is happening at my house I break that barrier with them that they don't trust me anymore because they look at me as an Administration I'm not saying every kid doesn't trust the administration but some of these students come to me and tell me things they won't tell you as parents the social worker the guidance counselor or the principals they come to me and they talk to me so if I'm out there policing the hallways yelling

089at these kids for what I think are little things right hey you need to be here you can't skip you can't Vape in the bathrooms right they handle that because I want to be a resource to them I don't want them to look at me negatively right so it's about me building those relationships with those kids talking to them so that they trust me right um I can't discipline kids I don't that's not what I want to do that's not my job I walk around I hang out with the kids I talk to them I leave that for the administration's team they call me when they need me officer also new available you available all the time so I leave that to them that's their job that's their that's their profession I'm there to do

090the other side of it if that answers your question now we can answer because this is just I don't know so if um a police officer is hired by the police department and then they're placed in the schools in SRO like what kind of training do they have for I'm assuming you know that there's I know there's an organization for sros I just that's just something I don't know about yeah so we go through a lot of training it's never stopping the school resource officer goes through a 40-hour course learning um behavior issues we learn how to work hand in hand with administrators at the school we do investigations on child abuse sex abuse how to interview with crimes how to build relationships with kids how to work with special ed students it's a huge

091array of training that we go through I still go through it all the time I go to basic SRO you have basic juvenile you have an advanced juvenile there's so many courses that I've taken because I things change right so I'm constantly trying to adapt and learn the trends in the school right the what kids are doing what they're not doing um it's it's a lot of training and I don't know if my anybody else wants to speak on that um does the um and I don't remember the details of the mou but how who pays for the training or is this you know I'm just thinking I know we're not the budget stages yet but I want to ask along the way we'll provide between in paper oh okay the officer they're employed by

092us we trade okay um but yeah it's a very there's a bunch of different levels of I'm very loud I usually I'm usually really loud so um so but yes we'll take care of all that there's no cost to the school district for that and we do their recertification uh to keep them up to date um if it is approved I understand that you provide the funding for the beginning parts of it during the interview process are you selecting somebody that's already employed at GP at the government public or Police Department okay they have to be one of my officers so there's x amount of people you have to be a certified police officer to be an SRO y the police officer are qualified like so we get to pick from your how many officers

093do you have 41 41 and however many people are that we whoever chooses um so they're already part of the building on the police department and part of their salary is paid for eventually by us right yeah they still you still pay for a decimal salary right yeah it's based on the school year the number of days that they're at the school is the formula we're currently using um the reason I can't use an officer from Choice are not employed by me we have jurisdictional issues with County and I have no control over that officer as far as our rules and regulations or anything like that so yeah say they would want to say they would transfer and I'm always available for any of you to discuss anything to do with police yeah I mean

094that's my question because I don't know Sean personally but I've heard just positive things but as far as I know we're not cloning Sean so I want to know like what you know how much does the school district have in input in terms of like a parent a student Etc I know you said you'd be open to having a student there would have in that higher of who is you know the SRO maybe asking those questions that um you know that are coming up straight you know from school themselves and I don't know if that's something for you to answer later um but I'm just curious about the process more it takes a very special person to be an SRI and not all officers want to be involved with the schools so that's part of

095that selection is there interest why they want to be there how they want to help kids it's it's pretty taxing and especially when we're all parents um to be in that role and again you're a counselor which is very different from what the rest of our job is so um that's part of that selection process so education training attitude we have officers I think you've met all of ours many times over officer stallmer Matt hanslik Eric batch although you've come to realize who you get they're the officers that want to be there that want to help that really are invested in in our kids in the program so that all plays in there in those interviews just like when I select somebody from Crossgates Mall for the the retail theft officer down there that's a

096very special officer that wants to work in that environment so I I can't give you specifics but no that's fine that's that's totally um thank you for for addressing that they're actually every General criteria in the mou that I pulled up that in order to be an SRO you have to meet three General criteria college or degree coursework because you need to you're in an educational atmosphere you'll be instructing at the elementary middle high school classes experience as a police officer and commitment to student well-being you need to have minimum two years experience as a patrol officer extensive experience with juvenile assignments experience working with youth and at interest in Student Success Juvenile Justice Child and Adolescent development in Psychology creating a positive School environment are essential and successful performance so Canada should be free

097of significant disciplinary action way to go Sean um and then training requirements 40 hours that's just to a minimum plus it says that they have to keep up every year with additional training um no shall complete a minimum of 40 hours well done okay if you have recommended although Sean already said that he does it which is great for him but I think we should potentially change that to required annual professional development and we do require that from our department they must be a certified because this was just the mou from the town of you guys and us so yeah do the sros get any Dei training and if not would you be open to that kind of training for anybody that we hired as well as Sean Sean do you have that training I'm

098I'm always open to training obviously the more training we have the better we all do so and what I'd like to let the whole board know is that we have had these many discussions and you're right you you don't you're not privy to all the discussions we've had but when I asked Chief if we could be more involved with the hiring process he has been nothing but open to it the entire time so he's open to having board members be there and I see this as a partnership so that's why I wanted to ask you publicly if you since we have these concerns regarding race relations if you would be open to Dei training for Sean and um if we hire another SRO absolutely thank you and then if I could go backwards with a

099point that you made part of our Criminal Justice Reform committee that we had for the police department based on the governor's recommendation uh part of that was the SRO program and if it was valid if it was worthwhile to pursue we did heavily look into that from a committee standpoint and that committee found highly in favor of continuing the SRO program that's based on our community when we look at studies from other areas we have to be careful where those studies are coming from and they're not specific togetherland they may be Newark New Jersey that you're looking at so again we have to be very careful with those studies and I think we always need to apply those studies to what we're doing here and is it working in Guilderland is the outcome that we're

100getting what we expect um so I'm always available I think we've chatted before on the SRO program I know when we did the mou students were a part of of that that mou that we came up with they had their input in along with DA's and police officers and administrators a lot of parties and stakeholders that looked at that mou and I know students were a part of that so I don't know if we want to call that formal or not but that has been looked at by our student body but again I'm always interested in what people have they're the users of our services and what that outcome is so I'll take any other questions where I can sit down so whatever for you go ahead I'm sorry um so to to Nathan's point

101and and also every town for school safety actually doesn't recommend school resource officers because of the concern for marginalized students and students with disabilities what do you say to that what is your response to that do you know me at all no some of the board do I'm about as transparent and open as you can get my door is always open I'm always asking the board I did yesterday what are the concerns of the students please come to me with those racial issues or whatever they are so we can meet and figure out how to address them it's all about communication and understanding one another before we can get ahead of that curve so if we don't hear about it or nobody's really coming forward or I can't get it in writing which I always

102ask for how can we address that um so we're always eager to look into whatever those concerns are and I bet if you reached out to your students I'd like to see who those students are not from my own personal knowledge but to address how we can help them to bridge that gap between police the school students the community that we all try to do right now I don't know if I answered your question but that's I think you did thank you um you know Schenectady recently debated the school resource officer issue and had a lot like many hours of public comment and a lot of it was more mixed than the public comment that comes out tonight um I don't know if you had a chance to look at any I haven't I've talked

103to many uh teachers in Schenectady school district and here what's going on in their schools over the last couple of years too this is not unique to Gilman I'm always aware of what goes on in the bigger world country but I try to bring it back to Gillen because that's what we're really focusing on one of the things that I'm hearing tonight though is an SRO is never going to stop uh shooting in a school does that make sense because the size of the buildings are not going to be there but what we're bringing to the school is a trained police officer who understands how to respond to an incident who's highly trained in dealing with if it happens to be a weapon but they also have the ability to reach out to the outside

104to the police department to get additional resources and help when they need that the school shooting that we saw was a total collect collapse of the whole system where we had a bunch of kids that were killed while the police were waiting outside and never did what they were supposed to do and that is something that's being held as a standard right now against police and anybody in our field knows that we failed miserably that day so that SRO was in the school they have the contact with the kids they're getting the information prior to the event sometimes that's how we stop incidents from happening is before they happen once they're going on it's really too late we're going to Now respond and try to minimize the damage so those relationships are huge and without

105speaking to specific cases tonight I can tell you in our town they've been effective over the years and I know one of those incidents stopped the mass shooting in our school and that was about two decades ago as a board privy to all of the threats that have been investigated we're not I'm not even okay but there are threats that are investigated that don't make it to our ears and how do we how do we measure those how do we how do we measure or keep track of the ones that were thwarted you know that were stopped by the investigations and what we have with the board is something I believe that's really special we have a dialogue that goes on almost daily there's not too many weekends that we don't have conversations with the

106staff from our side talking about how to better handle a situation or what happens if this goes on we have that dialogue this school has done an outstanding job at one point of entry locks doors training our staff to respond to a situation active shooter training all of those things together are all tools that we've had and use that make our schools safer that an SRO is just another tool it's just having another part to that puzzle that we've worked so hard on all these years to make our schools safer most of us can go back to when you could walk into a school there was no locked doors you could walk into your kids classroom and going back 20 25 years ago that's all changed there's one point of entry doors are locked safety

107procedures are followed we have lockdown shelter in place lockout procedures that we follow so we've come so far in this world that we live in and again we're just asking for a little more help with the SRO Sean's done over 700 different incidents last year that's a pretty amazing number that's one or two a day of things that he's handling it might be just escorting a student down a hallway or it could be actually dealing with somebody with a weapon or whatever so he's utilized a lot another one would help us continue that program and again in the middle school that's a key part to start this so if we go with our our policies our manuals we follow the rules we do what we're trained to do I think we're going to be all

108right and if there's an issue it sounds like you're open hire an SRO and then there are racial concerns or students are uncomfortable are we left in the literature or is that something we can come to you and discuss absolutely come to us we and we do routinely that's kind of a normal thing that we have with and and again I'd like to reassure the students that as adults we were kids once too but we're trying our very best to make your the schools safe I have children in those schools um as well and I worry about the same concerns that I'm hearing up here so we're doing the very best that we can I think we can do a little better but we have a very interesting world right now as well so I

109like hard questions so um Schenectady refers to their school resource officers as Community engagement officers is there any difference there or is it just a verbiage difference it is it's there's no difference and they're bringing that back now as you saw They just added a lot of additional ones back to the school that they had lost through funding Etc okay but there's no difference no difference um and then my second question is I know some school districts um their school resource officers are in uniform I don't know if your thoughts are on that so there's many different trains of thought on that um and to go to the SRO point about having an officer in a school that is a deterrent in itself when we look at hardening targets to make sure they stay safe

110having a police officer or somebody trained in any building is is a positive as far as the uniform goes I think it should be in a uniform if we put them in regular clothes nobody really sees what that is I think there's a there's a reason we have that officer in that school as you know with Sean his uniform is much softer than mine but still it's a police uniform to to give that comfort and that visual clue that that is a police officer in this school that's why we Mark units in the in the fire lanes and stuff so that you see that it's a deterrent it's a clue that you see that police car um so it can go either way that's a discussion that we have with the board often is is

111what that uniform should be and right now we currently believe it should be a uniform um this is maybe more for Sean but um in for our students when there's a mental health crisis and it requires a medical transport in schools office often officers are responding kind of manage that situation and that I don't know unless people have been in that scenario with students realize the role that police officers Play When a student needs a medical transport due to a mental health concern and I was wondering if you're able to support if that's part of your role if you're able to do that if a student has to be transported due to them to a mental health crisis safety to themselves or to others are you as a familiar face are you one of the

112people that respond in that scenario before transport I respond to everything at the school whether it's something small to Mental Health crisis or a medical emergency right I have connections might use my radio to connect my with my dispatch to get everybody there that needs the help right we as a school do have social workers that can help with the mental health part of it right and they can do an assessment if that person needs to be transferred to somewhere to seek more help right that familiar face for the student at that time of Crisis yeah I'm able to kind of talk to them and they say okay I'll talk to you or I don't want anybody else in this room I want officer Sean so I'll sit there and if it takes 20 minutes

11350 minutes an hour I'm there talking to them and then they go back but great that answers your question thank you to respond to your question Katie actually uh last week last week we had a student medical emergency at the middle school and officer hanslik heard the 9-1-1 call came over and from my perspective he was another resource for us to manage the situation to help close the hallways to help safely escort the family out of the building he was able to then you know make sure that the family was set as they were going in the ambulance down to Albany Med so in terms of his role in that situation from My Lens he was an additional person that I could lean on to say Hey you stand here we'll stand here we'll block

114and get everybody out safely and without having any embarrassment for the for the student so that's how it act that's how important it plays out in real world so it's does anybody else up here have any more questions so it's almost nine and we're at the start of our agenda there's a whole rest of the board meeting agenda to get through so um I think that it would be probably do you guys have quick comments or questions kind of quick okay so first I'd like to say how ironic it is that we're discussing studies after a completely disregarding studies last time I just I was here in May but that's besides the point because we chose what was best for this District so this is a simple yes or no question um have these marginalized

115students that we keep discussing in these studies come to this board because it's an open it's an open discussion and raise issues with our current SRO program yes or no head nods I I've been watching all the boardwings I'm going have they come to the principles no have they come to you right now I don't I don't I I obviously don't know personally but from what we've seen in like other parts of our district I also I just I don't see how this that's um relevant right now to our district and our situation okay last question and then um we'll move on I actually have some answers to some of your questions Mr Suburban uh first I do think uh having another resource officer at the middle school will benefit the high school because our

116resource officer will not be spread will be spread not as wide at the middle school we'll have one there so he will be more help here two um I understand that this could be a potentially uh scary situation for uh minorities but my question is what about the minorities who are becoming victims of some violent attacks at this school that's also a problem and they don't feel safe I think that's something we also need to recognize okay so I think oh last one Savannah I was like the minority student here um I'd like to speak on behalf of those who are sort of um apprehensive about the new SRO and I think I'd like to Circle back to Mr sovereign's point um there's like the whole image of a police officer could be really intimidating

117to a student who has um either is currently living or has previously lived in an area where they've had to sort of for lack of a better word hide or like try to avoid the police and I think that's a question of like um when they're walking to school and they see officer Ralston and like what he's wearing because like I think it looks um a lot like what police wear and their everyday um like and like on their everyday duties and I just think that like that could be a concern for individuals who are living in those situations and also minority students um personally I don't feel uncomfortable having a resource to for safety I think it's honestly better for all of us but I think we should take into consideration like those um

118those opinions that parents and students can have and also um I think someone mentioned that every town um statistic and I don't think we should disregard that because every town is like one of the most moderate gun control organizations and they are really dedicated to helping um the gun violence crisis and if they have stated that sros are not effective or not in order for the gun violence issue I think that we should probably take into consideration that thank you thank you Savannah so I think this is the start of a bigger discussion I know that um this is the first time it's been at a board agenda so I will leave this first open to the district to reach out to the students to get some feedback directly to hear from middle school and

119high school students I know we've done this before for different topics to hear about the SRO program and then safety in general but before we move on to the next topic I just want to kind of disentangle the the issue of what happened with the lockdown drill and the SRO piece because they're somewhat related but they're not fully related and so I just want to make a point that I know a lot of us have received emails from parents from teachers and have heard from students and I don't think this discussion is really over I know I myself is really I'm just disappointed with how it was handled and I know that we've all piled on and told the administration this in the past 24 hours and so I don't think it's a topic that's

120um that we're just going to move on from I'm hoping that there's a path forward that we can learn from it but I just wanted to acknowledge that first because so many of us have re been re so many people have reached out to all of us about it and then also because it is related to this but not fully related to the SRO conversation but I think the SRO conversation is going to continue a bit um Blanca Marie what were you hoping for from us were you hoping that we would vote tonight that we would vote later is there going to be a program report there was no expectation for any voting tonight I think this was um you know the opportunity to bring the topic to the board and the community and to

121have this conversation and have questions raised and you know additional information to be gathered so I think that's where we are at this point the generous offer that you have expire because I believe you made this offer originally in August didn't find that thank you today and I offered three months ago to start the programs I I would feel more comfortable if we had some kind of timeline at least because we are still seeing an increase in fighting our administrators have told us that they could use some help and so I feel like we're leaving this a little uh sort of abstract you know we're going to think about it and ask questions and get more information but there doesn't seem to be a definitive timeline of any kind and and that concerns me we

122have an offer on the table we have students who are concerned we have community members who've come out we have administrators telling us that they could use an SRO at the middle school and we're kind of not even letting them know when we might have a decision or an actual discussion about it I've made it should not take a lot of time one we can get the curriculum from Chief McNally that will be an easy one to help us understand what's the scope of the work and what our sros learn I heard loud and clear that we want to hear from our students we can do that I think in short order to get their input and I also heard that we can um this might be a longer term thing but start doing some

123research into what grants are available so that it becomes a moot point in the budget piece if in fact we are eligible um so I think those three things can come back to the board uh the December 6th meeting and then I guess I would ask if there are other outstanding questions and needs for information that it sent to me so we can coordinate that as quickly as possible I mean one question that I would like to I know that you can't just answer it but you could add to this is I feel like it was nearly impossible to find eight thousand dollars this year to get those extra coaches and that's under ten thousand dollars so now we're looking at fifty six thousand dollars for next year so I just don't want this to

124be where we're not talking about this until the very end of the budget season so just where do you think that money could come from I know you're talking about um this year being from the police department but really it's that's just the rest of this year we're talking about the budget for next year correct the difference between this conversation and the one and in this case we would have the topic about uh the fifty six thousand dollars in that list of priorities that we would consider for funding going forward for next year so if would be you know what are our priorities which is the discussion discussion we always have the question is our cost okay I don't know what the balance is I just know what our apartment is well I'm just saying

125I think that needs to be to be flirt you know that would be the amount the district would be billed from okay so I'm going to move on to the consent items but I'll give everyone a minute in case they want to leave before this part it's nine o'clock we actually last last meeting we were under an hour spell Ed for NFL all right so moving on to the consent items this includes the minutes of the October 25th meeting the November 15th uh Personnel action and the financials a through D can I have a motion to approve the consent items Nate second Rebecca any questions or comments all in favor aye passes 9-0 next information items curriculum and instruction I'll turn it over to Rachel good evening I have a few individuals to recognize this

126evening first I'd like to recognize Kimberly Kern who received the James E Weaver recognition award this past weekend at the New York state tesol conference at what in White Plains and here's some words from her nomination Kimberly Curran is a student in the Clarkson university's master of arts in teaching Esau program Capital Region campus she has over a decade of experience working with K-12 students as a teaching assistant in the gilderland Central School District many of whom are elves or multiple language learners and has taken steps to become a certified Esau teacher in our graduate program Kimberly is in her second of four semesters of the mat Esau program with a 4.0 GPA for the 15 credits of certified excuse me 15 credits of tesol coursework that she has already taken she will complete her

127year-long student teaching residency in the Guilderland Central School District and will finish her mat Esau program in June 2023. so congratulations to Kimberly uh also I have two teachers English teachers to recognize from the high school each year the New York State English Council or nysac recognizes excellence in teaching by presenting awards at their annual conference this year Robin zisa a ghs English teacher has been selected as a recipient of nysex educator of Excellence award I would also like to recognize Chris Missouri another ghs English teacher who is serving this year as the NYSC president so congratulations to both Robin and Chris next I'll turn it over to Dr Weil's superintendent information [Music] school year at the elementary level half the day was utilized for parent-teacher conferences teachers and staff participated in a variety of

128trainings offered including staff to believe that's for our nurses Promethean board training de-escalation training praise training that's the citizens response to active shooter exercise and then we head from elementary science training as well Matt pinchenott presented training for understanding and there were Dei discussions held at the high school level in the aftermath of the incident that's been referred to many times the Middle School offered professional development options in three strands wellness and biology and then we also hosted Natalie McGee for progression Partners to share information about our Equity audit including the equity Learning Blocks that began the day after our conference day and continued through Monday November 7th she spoke with our staff at three different times twice at the high school with groups and then another session at Linwood Elementary so all of our

129employees got a brief overview of the work that we're doing with Ubi and then we yesterday had our expanded leadership council meeting had an opportunity to debrief the day to look at the evaluations that came in from our staff on the various programs that we offered to take their feedback into consideration as we're planning our March conference in our March conference day is going to be much more building and Department based rather than big programs district-wide so overall we think it was a very good day we learned some things from the feedback that we'll take into our planning in the future it was good keep going oh yeah sorry guys today is school related professional day I guess we'll say we was so related professional today so we just want to join with everyone and

130acknowledge um the school related professionals who make such a tremendous contribution to our district and our students in our community they work side by side with us each and every day and are often the unsung heroes of what happens in our models and in our school buses and our cafeterias so these are our custodians and maintenance staff Food Service AIDS monitors nurses teaching assistants clerical staff and bus drivers we could not do what we do without them so so appreciate their efforts so I hope they will accept our sincere appreciation I heard there were many treats around the district for our staff and last but not least we did launch a thought exchange yesterday and I'm guessing it did not go out to students yet but has it already done that because we had some

131student responses in it because I know so anyway they found the link somehow so we're Gathering input on the budget for 22-23 we want to hear from parents and community members our faculty and staff and also students The Exchange is set up so that you see thoughts and rate the other thoughts from that group so parents and community members will evaluate their faculty and staff who evaluate theirs and students will evaluate theirs it's a very helpful analysis tool and it's going to be open for several days to five o'clock on the day before Thanksgiving November 23rd so I encourage everyone to go in multiple times look at new thoughts and rate them and add new ones that come to mind and that's it okay thank you Dr Wiles next we have board president information we

132have a set of policies a through G Nate or anybody else on that committee have any comments they want to make for us to look at specifically uh no I mean it to me it's pretty self-explanatory most the musical instrument one is uh recommendations from the musical Department um and uh admission of non-resident students some recommendations from the admin level and uh the rest of them are pretty straightforward yeah I would say that if um when everybody's looking over the policies before they come back for Action to look at letter C the admission of non-resident students because I think that's probably the one that has the most significant change or at least potential so um I also I had questions on B do I just like send an email or yeah yeah you can send

133it to I mean you could send it to Nate or any of us on the policy committee we can talk about it right unless you have it yeah my question is do we yeah if we're gonna oh it's not it's not a bad question I'm just because I was reading through it and um what is it one it says um towards on the second page one of the school-wide approaches the district may use to remediate a student's performance prior to referral for special education as a response to intervention and RTI process um our district doesn't really have a solid RTI process which one are you looking at I'm looking at B implementation okay I'm sorry I thought somebody said the thing about these patients I'm sorry no no no that's fine so I didn't know

134if it was like a policy issue or if it was only because it's in but I know like we haven't had the response to intervention information on our website since 2015 and we don't have a way that they actually track the information so that's a problem yeah so that's why I'm just kind of isn't that a is that so that is that something that Lisa or at least Knowles could give us feedback on because I will take a look okay okay yeah all right thank you thanks uh next I'll move on to action items first is school business Neil arm enforcement program opt-in agreement and which is made between the Albany County Gilman Central School District and bus Patrol America LLC and just to give you a little background on this this is a program

135that shared services that Albany County created that allows all school districts within the county to access this program and they're basically using this company a technology company called bus Patrol which has a artificial intelligence powered stop-arm cameras that they would add on our buses at no cost so they do that at no cost to the school district at all and that camera will capture anybody that illegally passes the stop school bus so when they have the stop arm out red sign out if a car goes by there the camera will record that it'll put together an Evidence package that will be reviewed by members of bus Patrol to make sure it can solve the criteria that gets sent to law enforcement and then law enforcement will actually ticket the driver and the driver can actually

136get go online and see the footage of what was captured so the idea here is really to enhance safety make it safer for children and also to curb motorists from passing stop school buses with the red lights on so hopefully it will do that and if you get a citation once the next time if you have another citation the fee goes up and it continues so so it's a really great program I think something that the school district is going to benefit from and the community is going to kind of benefit from and our students are going to benefit from it they also will we don't get any of the money we don't pay anything we don't get any back but it takes care of it works on the product it's no cost for the

137school district they install the cameras they maintain the cameras we don't get any of the fees either but there's a greater Community yeah it's a greater Community benefit I really do a motion first mate second Rebecca now we can have other comments and questions I just wanted to say I think it's awesome thanks to the county we don't have to pay for it and I think this is what people have been talking about and hoping for for a while Rebecca did you have something yeah um we get a report on how many tickets we've issued or you know what the data is um we haven't discussed that I'm sure we can but yeah that would be great to be able to see how often it happens in our community and it's probably more along Western

138Avenue our bus stops on the right-hand side of the road cars passing on the far opposite side may not realize um but it does happen unfortunately within our school district okay all in favor I I pass this nine zero uh next is a resolution for an installment purchase agreement to replace copiers within the school district can I have a motion to approve the installment purchase agreement uh Katie second Blanca any questions or comments all in favor passes 9-0 next is a resolution to approve an intermunicipal agreement with South colonies Central School District and this is for South County's School District to provide a half day Regents diploma-based alternative education program for some of our students can I have an emotion to approve the agreement with South Colony School District Rebecca's second Kim any questions or

139comments all in favor motion carries 9-0 next is a resolution to approve the application for refund of real property taxes for the 2022-2023 school year as recommended by the Albany County director of Real Property Tax Services can I have a motion to approve the application for refund of real property taxes Kelly second Nate any questions or comments all in favor passes 9-0 and then finally this evening we have a resolution to declare Surplus obsolete items and put those up for sale can I have a motion to approve the Declaration of surplus obsolete property Rebecca second Gloria any questions or comments all in favor passes 9-0 great thank you Neil next we'll move on to superintendent action Dr Wiles thank you I have several six to be accurate um co-curricular Club approvals to at the high

140school the empowering club with Mr Gold and the Haven Aviation club with Mr Coro and at the middle school there are four proposed clubs the courtyard Club the Mr Winchester and Miss Mullins the Rubik's Cube club with Miss Camino beautiful meat club with Miss Heigl and dancing with the students with Nick Dutch uh I don't see the dancing one on here so dancing with students is to encourage students to be able to dance in public and to give them the opportunity to have fun work as a team and dance in school for me every Tuesday with Miss stage okay great so can I have a motion to approve these clubs Rebecca second Katie any questions or comments pretty cool to see all the clubs being formed by the students all in favor yes exactly all

141in favor passes 9-0 thank you Dr Wiles next we'll move on to board committee reports uh we'll start with Communications I'll make it a little quick because uh Dr Wiles covered the first uh thing which which was the thought exchange we had to change the dates on that we did talk about at the end to remind the people that you don't if you didn't put something in the thought exchange you could still come to the board meetings through at the end the public comment uh time at the beginning or at the end of board meetings you're welcome to come and share your ideas for the budget of next year's budget anytime um also we began to look at what's we're calling a voter turnout analysis and we began by looking at westmere the westmere catchment

142area because we just noted uh we were looking at the the results of the budget vote how few people that seemed to be a low turnout so uh Neil and Linda got together and did our first analysis and they they took the westmere data and they came to the back to the committee to share share what they had found I'm not going to take tonight it's late enough I don't need to go through all the data that we discovered but it's fascinating to look at we were so fascinated with it and talked so much about it we decided that it would be good to do for the other catchment areas as well and see what we could learn by looking at that the goal of all this is to find out if there are ways

143that we can help people become voters uh find out why people aren't voting and maybe get them more information maybe it's a language problem whatever it might be that our goal is to increase our voter participation uh in the town so uh in this budget and any school vote we also talked about how we might involve especially our seniors more with the schools to connect them more with the schools so they see some of the value that that we do provide for our community we came up with some ideas just to get us started this is going to be an ongoing discussion but talk we talked about offering seniors complimentary tickets to the Dress rehearsals of the middle school or high school plays Outreach to recent graduates inviting Community to new facilities like the turf

144field or eventually the new Pavilions and fighting the seniors in to maybe have some activities there inviting community members to existing facilities like the butterfly station which doesn't an awesome job bring kind of Bridging the connection between the community but also maybe bringing some seniors in who might not know about it consider events like Grandparents Day or alumni game on the new field and things like that so we'll be talking about that again our next meeting will be December 12th and those two items are will still be on our agenda the voted turnout and the community engagement on the budget okay thank you Gloria oh were you gonna say something yeah the ideas remember that um we discussed was maybe inviting some seniors to the dress rehearsal for the musical and since right well so

145since Mr maycock is here um I was just wondering and you can just wave from over there for the dress rehearsal is that when the mask students attend and is the auditorium typically full or is there space that day extra seating that press reversal is a school thing um a discount for seniors okay thank you next policy Nate yeah we had a meeting um two days after communication so I can tell I remember uh we we went over the policies that we just reviewed and um obviously as SEMA said the one that has probably the greatest amount of changes would be the admission so if SEMA said uh you know if anybody wants to really look at them that would be the one to look at and we'll obviously follow up with the RTI question

146that uh Kim had uh we don't have a I don't think we scheduled our next meeting yet I don't think so not yet okay thank you I can give an update on the um audit committee we met I don't remember one but it was 8 A.M and yes it was in person um so the main agenda item for the audit committee was to look at special areas to do a special areas internal audit and so we had a discussion about um doing an audit of school lunch because looking back at the history it hadn't been done in 10 years and so I think the discussion around that the federal government's not providing lunch anymore and that we have a new school lunch director might also give her some valuable information that it would be a

147good idea since it's been such a long time to work on the school lunch program audit and then depending upon how long that takes we basically gave um Alexa who was working with us about the to do these special area audits we mentioned concussion management is another one one and if I remember correctly and I don't know if you remember you know it was probably it hasn't been done here yet at least not from the years that we looked at right right so we thought that if there was um extra time after the lunch school lunch audit was done that that could be an area of uh interest and if we don't get to it we wanted to just make sure it was thanks to Nils in the minute so next year when we look

148at a special area audit maybe that's something that we could look at and there's a lot to concussion Management on itself would be a lot more than I had known so it was it was very interesting and I don't think we have a meeting scheduled yet but we probably will soon right okay probably thank you Neil um next we'll go to who am I forgetting business practices thank you okay great thanks and then we have Dei there's a meeting tomorrow I think it's 7 pm right and there's another committee isn't there I don't think so no but it's okay that's all sorry all right let me go back to the agenda um I'll go back to public comment number two Linda are there any other public comments oh okay should I check my email okay

149well this um is going through the airwaves to get sent to me just I guess a reminder for everybody to do the board self-evaluation when it's done okay oh that was fast here we go uh public comment number two uh this person writes I'm a member of the board of education's Dei committee and have a student in Guilderland High School it sounds like we are agreed that having another SRO will not resolve the rise in behavioral issues and disruptive incidents that have been reported that have reportedly been on the increase at Guilderland high school and also at Farnsworth Middle School I'm wondering if it would be possible to hold a town hall style in-person meeting for students teachers administrators staff parents and Community to talk about what has been happening and to seek possible solutions

150if this is done through a thought exchange survey instead of a more interactive meeting the question should be broader than just asking students whether they agree with having more sros it should include a question about whether students have observed a rise in violent incidents and if they if they have any ideas about how they would like to see them addressed I think the SRO should be asked to undergo Dei training it would be great if they also wanted to attend some of the Dei committee meetings as an ongoing part of their training and as a way of showing willingness to learn about these issues this from Elizabeth Floyd Mayer thank you Linda are there other public comments okay I think that's a good suggestion that she makes um other questions comments boards board issues ideas

151and sharing no okay so can I have a motion to adjourn Rebecca's second Nate all in favor passes 9-0 thank you everybody have a good night