001good evening and welcome to the february 15 2022 guilderland central school district board of education meeting would you all please silence your cell phones and rise for the which it pledge one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay first on the agenda tonight we have public comment and we'll start with our in-person public comment the first we have is from connor webb about secure gun storage education if you could just state your name at the mic thanks good evening um is this there we go um i am conor webb i am joined by my fellow leadership members norah whiteside and emily o'connor um i'm the president of the march for our lives guilderland chapter um we've been over uh we've been active over the past few months we're here tonight to
002ask for your continued support in ending the scourge of gun violence between august 1st and november 30th of last year there have been at least 104 instances of gunfire on school grounds killing 20 and wounding 79 people at least 5.4 million children live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded weapon and up to 80 percent of school shooters under the age of 18 acquire their weapon from the home including the recent oxford michigan shooter who killed four every town for gun safety and its grassroots organization's moms demand action and students demand action have released a comprehensive roadmap to prevent school shootings and on the top of their list is the secure storage of firearms we want the critical stakeholders gathered here to know that we are scared we are being needlessly traumatized
003over and over because of these threats of shootings tackling school safety must include addressing gun violence that happens inside and outside of our classrooms we're demanding more because we deserve more and so we are calling for the board to pass a resolution requiring education to parents about secure firearm storage this is a not a novel or an unusual request already school districts across the country and states as diverse as vermont texas california arizona south carolina georgia and others covering more than 2 million students have passed similar resolutions calling for parental education on firearm safety just last week the school board in montgomery county maryland the 15th largest school district in the country passed a similar resolution we want gilerland to be the next we all may be scared but we're also determined to use our
004collective voices to stop gun violence this is also in conjunction with the work the district has been doing and developing the budget with a focus on promoting social and emotional health by potentially increasing mental health counselors which every town has also identified as the second priority in reducing gun violence so i thank you all very much for your time and consideration thank you so much hey linda do we have any more public comment in person okay so we have three public comments that are written in i will read them the first is from stephanie smith says dr wiles can you please use your authority to do what is right and needed for our children and lift the mis mask mandate in school since the governor lifted this mandate for everyone else in new york state
005why can't these kids be included so many of these kids are now able to have the freedom to participate in sports and activities outside of school without a mask as well as keep masks off virtually anywhere except school can you please explain to me the rationale for this when we know that most kids are at such low risk of being extremely ill with covid not to mention our numbers are the lowest they've been since november why can't be why can't now be the time to give these kids some normalcy back thank you for your time stephanie smith the next public comment is from christina nichols a video has surfaced of a current board member's post on their social media platform while i am all about free thought exchange and expression of personal opinions i'm very
006concerned that the president of the school board an elected public position has chosen to post private and confidential emails from parents on her social media page these private emails have also contained personal information such a name and email address this is completely inappropriate behavior and should not be tolerated by the administration not only is she breaking an ethics violation it is extremely unprofessional it lacks a moral compass and she should be ashamed of herself i would expect more character and dignity from someone who holds a leadership position such as hers i would like to know what further steps are being taken to make sure this never happens again thank you christina nichols i just want to clarify since we always correct incorrect public comments because that's in reference to me that i've never shared confidential
007emails so i don't think there's any further steps to take and the third public comment is from melissa dover good evening last week our governor lifted the mass mandates on our businesses yet failed our children once again by leaving the mandate intact for our schools can you please explain the logic in this isn't there something more our schools can do i urge you to consider when the time comes it's and it's left up to schools again to give these kids a break i also plead with you not to treat our children differently based on their vaccine status as this past winter has shown to many the vaccines haven't done much to curb covet and our children are the lowest risk i also urge you to reconsider the vaccine mandates on children in high risk sports
008many parents in this gilderland school district are beyond frustrated with all these mandates yet do not feel safe enough to voice these opinions or feel as if their positions don't really matter to any of the school board especially after repeated emails have been left unanswered despite what some people may think that children are resilient and learn from others many are suffering silently of course they go along with it and try to make us happy by not complaining to you but many children are suffering more than you know they feel as though they can't be heard or it doesn't matter if they can if they are they have trouble hearing their teachers they want to see their friends faces our kids feel helpless and feel like the people who are supposed to look out for them
009and their mental health have failed them and don't care and it's frustrating to them because it is also hypocritical when you see the crowds on tv at football games and concerts and yet our children are still being accosted and harassed by school employees to put their masks up when they are seeking a simple break from them i ask you as the board to consider all sides of this and the people who are afraid to speak out and the people who are truly suffering with anxiety and depression from these masks consider letting masks and vaccines be a choice when it comes down to it please keep the parents as who make who makes the choice for our children to be masked or vaccinated not the governor or you thank you for your time melissa dover linda
010do we have any more public comments thank you so i the the mask um the couple of public comments about masks i know we are going to talk about the mask mandate down below under superintendent information so we can have that conversation then and um the students that spoke to that i don't know if you have any um anything because you mentioned a resolution if something you could email us or information you could email the board so we could look at that does that sound good okay thank you all right so we'll move on to the next agenda item the consent items this includes the minutes of february 1st meeting the cpsc and csc recommendations personnel action and the financials can i have a motion to approve the consent items nate second rebecca any questions
011or comments all in favor passes eight zero was gloria on there yet right she was and then she jumped out okay yeah i get both links open oh that's good all right it passes eight zero thank you so next we'll move on to information items curriculum and instruction okay i'm going to start with some excellent news we have six guilderland uh teachers who have been recognized as master teachers so on february 4th governor hochul announced the selection of 230 new york state master teachers to join the statewide network of educators the master teacher program is a statewide network of the highest performing stem teachers who are also dedicated to sharing their expertise with peers and attracting high school students to careers in stem so we are pleased and honored to announce that the following teachers
012have been accepted into the new york state master teacher program our sincere congratulations give out to all of them and they include ashley gerard and stacy demira both from farnsworth middle school and then four from guilderland high school max corbett felicia mctiernan jared fourro and deb voice so huge congratulations to them but i also want to recognize our school district because i happened to be on a meeting last week with some representatives from across the region and many from suny albany and i learned at that meeting that gilderland has the highest number of selected master teachers in our region and potentially the state i would have needed to go through those 230 names to see if it was the state but either way we are standout because this individual says so what exactly is in
013the water in gilderland and i just said excellence so i'll just keep going here i have a long list tonight um the first item is a reminder that the uh gilderland chamber of commerce commerce is going to sponsor its annual state of the town forum and that's from 7 30 a.m to 9 00 a.m on tuesday march 1st and that is going to be a virtual event i should have some registration information coming my way soon the event is always a great opportunity for the guilderland community to come together i am one of the invited speakers to talk about the state of guilderland central school district and it's always a pleasure to be part of that event and you know hopefully lots of folks will be able to come my second item is a memorandum
014of agreement for review attached you have a four or five page memorandum of agreement still for your first read for information between the guilderland central school district the town of guilderland and the guilderland police police department so this is to outline our arrangements and our understandings about our school resource officer who is stationed here in the high school but who serves the entire district part of our safety plan requires that we have a formalized agreement with the town that really lays out our expectations and their expectations for how this program will work so we've been working with chief mcnally and his team really for the last several almost months it's certainly several weeks to put together this moa it's been reviewed by numerous stakeholders including parents teachers our administrators students the court system parole board
015a lot of folks have looked at it so i'm going to invite the board to take a look at it and then at our next meeting we'll ask uh for the board to go ahead and act on it and have it can i in place quick question sure i was about that so um is there a difference between this mou i know has to be updated but from the previous mou we have never had an mou okay in the past we've had i would say more of an informal understanding of the role and we would communicate more through conversation than we would in a written agreement but the written agreement is actually a requirement for our safety plan it needs to be attached to it so that's why we have formalized that thank you you
016want to take questions um we can take questions now if it'd be helpful yeah okay do you have a question well i i just i might my concern i mean does it say anything about whether the s-o-r-s-r-o excuse me is is an armed sr sro sro school resource officer is it covered whether they can carry yes it is an armed officer go ahead judy what does the contract arrangement for pay i've forgotten because town and and school boat um it has evolved over time but at this point and and i'm going to turn to neil to help me we actually pay for the portion of the salary that matches the 180 days where the officer is actually here so i don't know if i didn't quite get that right now yeah so we can cover
017a portion of the officer's regular salary recognizing the time that they're working for the school district in that capacity so we pay them as if they're our full-time salary during the school year i mean our full-time employee their salary matches that and then the rest of the year the town pays their salary the town pays their salary all year long we they're the town we okay we paid the town for our share okay thank you and right now there's it's one sro at the high school right that's right so and he's here right now there's officer alston sitting in the back his office is here but he could tell you he gets called to all of our buildings to assist in a variety of ways so this is up for info and then next time
018we can still ask more questions absolutely all right any other questions on that the next item is the results of the thought exchange and i can pull up um the reports that we put together assuming all the technology works for me all right um so a week ago we released the thought exchange to our school community writ large it was one thought exchange but we were able to structure it so that different audiences was it would engage with one another separately so students could log in and do the thought exchange and see the thoughts of their peers and write them we had another category for parents guardians and community members and then the third category was faculty and staff so what i'm going to do tonight i have we closed this at five o'clock last
019night so we've not done a ton of analysis these reports are kind of automatically generated by thought exchange and the themes in it are the ai themes the artificial intelligence themes so it's still kind of a little rough around the edges but because it just closed and we're in the thick of doing our budget i thought it would be good for you to get a feel for what's here and then we'll fine-tune it a little bit and then it'll be posted to our website so i'm going to start with our parent results and just some basics here so we had 187 this is parents guardians community members who submitted 195 thoughts and they provided 8691 ratings i'm gonna start by just showing uh some of the top thoughts and then i'll jump down you can
020see some of the themes that uh were covered as well but i'll just start with the thoughts so top thought has to do with teacher retention and teacher pay and making sure our staff stay here you see bathrooms get mentioned a class size comes up quite a bit these are some of the top thoughts scroll smaller class sizes support for great teachers and valuable smaller class sizes again i think i skipped the start the ending time for middle schools also on here the whole notion of maintaining programs as we're making decisions again class sizes come up again especially with covid also at the middle school small classes some reference to building conditions fixed problems in the building smaller class sizes smaller class sizes elementary with built-in recess hvac more upgrades in the high school well-rounded
021high quality educational opportunity less administrators more class size traffic out in front of our buildings vocational education um maintaining programs drop off pickup and so on so there's some themes here an observation about this and really all of the groups it was even though the question that we asked was what are your priorities for the um uh general operating budget we heard about a lot of things that have nothing to do with the general operating budget um and here this is the parent group again i'll just point out some of the uh highest rated categories so there's still a lot of commentary around the condition of our bathrooms again those are now under the work of our capital project that's going on now and will continue over the next two summers so we're continuing to
022address those you see the class size piece there comes up quite a bit another area that came up a lot was our school lunch program when we see the students report this is high on their list too you may have heard that you know we've run out of food in fourth the fourth lunch um and that has been not untrue but it's not necessarily well it isn't a budget item first of all our school lunch program is not part of our general operating budget but also we are struggling like everyone with supply chain issues so we literally can't get some of the things we want for our cafeteria and we've also had some staffing shortages so um we're um you know certainly working through all of those things that we hear loud and clear from
023our students that you know they they're hoping to have a more robust set of choices as the day unfolds um but you can see other categories they talk about mental health this is parents again um time comes up uh learning issues um i also want to point out the um the wi-fi following our cyber incident almost a year ago now we had to disable our bring your own device network for safety and security reasons it's a huge vulnerability and parents are feeling it our students are really feeling it as well as our staff and i'll just say that that too is not connected to our general operating budget we are addressing that we've got some plans in place to try to make our systems more robust in order to support multiple identities on our on
024our website but that is a huge one and of course there's interest in masks so that's you know quick karen's piece go ahead barbara have you talked to cliff about that what is that part of our repairs that are already undergoing apparently this individual says it's been going on for years so again we just saw these yesterday and i haven't talked to cliff about i don't know if neil you're aware off the top of your head if it's part of our current capital project yeah i don't know that level of detail to know that's part of the plan or not okay we're definitely we're going to dig into a lot of this stuff more thoroughly so let me i'll go ahead uh blanca um are there comments about the food program the lunch program and
025how we run out of some of our supplies um just wondering do we make an effort ever to go local or are we talking about like the supply chain nationally uh we do go local matter of fact megan bates who's our school lunch director is one of the leaders in the area of making those connections to local producers and trying to expand the supplies that we get close to home in order to provide for our students so we're doing a lot of that okay it's a combination of both the national supply but also well in february it's kind of tough to get fresh produce in february but it is definitely a priority megan has actually worked as part of the legislative agenda to promote that senator hinchey actually invited us to come to her press
026conference supporting a bill to expand the ability to use more local sourced businesses and farms in order to bring products to schools because of bidding requirements there's sometimes some artificial hurdles there to doing the work so we're very committed to that great thank you let me jump over to students and i'll do the same kind of you know 30 foot overview we had 307 students we had thoughts and 16 thousand ninety-two ratings and let me just give you the top thoughts here so almost every one of these top thoughts is about wi-fi so you can see very much that this is on the minds of the students so this is the byod issue and this struggles that we all have connecting our own phones to the network so this is really a high priority that
027we work through it so i'm going down here there's you see fourth lunch cell service self-service wi-fi websites blocked wi-fi commentary about bathrooms and sinks we need wifi look there lunch and wi-fi were popular areas of thoughts let me show you the themes here so you clearly see the priorities wi-fi lunch uh hall monitors uh students are not asking for more hall monitors in case you're wondering bathrooms come up so we are still expending those funds that they have all been accounted for okay so the um there's actually a number of funding pathways this is connected to the wi-fi question in addition to smart schools we have our capital project uh we have e-rate i know we just submitted a application not uh we just did the work to or get some things purchased through
028e-rate and um we also have our federal relief funds that have some amount of technology in there but most of them are those first three areas all right so that's the big topics with our students and then let me go back to faculty and staff so we had 149 employees jump on with 104 thoughts and 48.55 in terms of ratings and a lot about our tas increasing salaries maintaining or increasing staffing school end times class size appreciation for all staff more salary smaller class sizes hire more teachers to reduce class size staffing substitute teachers and full-time subs again that's been a real struggle even if we have the resources to pay for them which we do it's very hard to find them lots about class size continuing there about the positivity project time change building
029upkeep so very similar themes across all uh all three groups and i think that's the end of the first page and then let me just do the themes so again very similar kinds of themes going across comments thoughts questions we'll get this cleaned up we'll post it go ahead nate class sizes is is the issue we have physical meaning do we have the space for more classes is it a lack of teachers we have the space we don't have the teachers to spread the classes out or is it both a little bit more a little bit of one a little bit less i mean um what can we do well the big issue and i'm foreshadowing march 8th here is the middle school uh the class sizes there are very high we have over time
030you know tried to manage that in with the middle school and the teaming model it's not like simply adding a section like we do if we have a bubble class in third grade at ges when we have high class sizes it becomes a package deal we're building a team and then we're adding on the um the special area classes you know art music technology and so on so it becomes a very expensive proposition in order to address class size however you know not to steal any thunder we have not addressed this in p past years because it is such a big ticket item we can't avoid it anymore so that is the middle school is the biggest issue class sizes in the high school are reasonable at the elementary level we've been able to stay
031within our guidelines for the most part so that's something to look toward in a couple weeks it's a combination of both of those factors space and we have the space at five okay yeah absolutely we have the space um but it's really the personnel that makes it a very expensive move but the um you know the data shows that this isn't a blip it's not like a one year we have a large class moving through as we look at the grades coming up this is a problem that's not going away and you know honestly it's a great problem to have i'd rather have our enrollments growing than the opposite go ahead i just have a question about um the start time because there are budget implications this year for that and trying to avoid you
032know having to do that next year where you know we have to use a part of the budget for that it's not planned i didn't know i know i may have asked already i don't remember about if you started talking about those times for next year so um we've had a couple preliminary conversations about what start time can look should look like next year it's very clear that we have to do some adjusting because we don't have enough time between the runs however i i don't see it as a budget issue where we have to you know hire more drivers because honestly even if we could they're just not there so to build a solution that has more runs isn't going to be sustainable we'll have the same level of struggle that we have this
033year so um i am bringing together a small team to do another kind of deep dive and what solutions could there be understanding that we really don't want the elementary to go any earlier and we don't want the middle to go any later so what can we do in between to make the system work better and you know it came out in many places in the thought exchange and you know we all have eyes to see that it has been a struggle however i i don't know if everyone saw there was a story in the times union i think it was earlier this week kind of reiterating the research about adolescence and sleep and start time and and they featured us to say gilderlin did it now granted it's not pretty year one so we
034do need to do some work to get it where our buses can get in at the same at the appropriate time and you know hopefully the traffic things can be addressed a little bit but there are you know two things in gilderland we can't change one is the traffic and the other is the location of our buildings unless we're like really starting over from scratch which i don't think we're going to do thank you but i just want to thank everyone who participated in the thought exchange um it's wonderful to get some feedback and um you know understand what's really on everybody's mind go ahead blanca it's closed you know right yeah closed at five o'clock on okay monday okay all right i think i have several more things so my next item um again
035this is presented tonight for a first read but i'll i'll say uh right off the bat that if everyone is comfortable with our proposed plan for this memorial scholarship award for our dear colleague damian singleton i would love for us to be able to formalize it so we can actually begin the process of raising the funds but um a couple weeks back i met with um jen singleton and then right after that with mr piscatelli and candace glarno from the guidance office who coordinates our awards and tried to put together a memorial award that would capture the values that damien embodied in his life and work so what we have is a scholarship that will recognize student or students depending on how successful we are with fundraising fundraising who has overcome unique challenges and embodies
036ideals that dr singleton championed social justice inclusion and enrichment for all so the purpose of the award will be to aid in the cost of continued education without regard for grade point average or college majors this uh award would also be um the individual who gets it or individuals would be selected by uh an awards committee so that it doesn't require anyone to write an essay or it doesn't create any barriers for someone to be considered for it by having to do other kinds of things so we've already received a donation so we're already opened the account very generous donation um so i will just leave it at that our goal next is to start raising some some funds in order to do this for this school year and how are we going to do
037that well we're going to work with our partners to get the word out the gilderland teachers association the administrators association we will communicate out through the district office to remind everyone about all of the scholarships that we have but point out that this is a new one we'll reach out to former colleagues you know other assistant superintendents thinking about um putting a an ad of some sort in the enterprise not funded by the district to let graduates former colleagues retirees know about the award and jen singleton has said she's happy to help spread the word perhaps in circles that we wouldn't necessarily know about and um it doesn't say on here i don't think who would we make checks out to have that been decided um yes if you are interested in making a donation
038you can make them out to the gilderland central school district and in the subject line at the bottom just write the singleton memorial scholarship i mean if everybody's comfortable we can vote to suspend the rules and then vote to approve it tonight so they don't have to wait until the next meeting right to go ahead and start i'll make that motion make a motion barb kim ii judy all in favor to suspend the rules so we can vote i passes 9-0 now can i have a motion to accept the scholarship award rebecca second nate all in favor pass is nine zero so that can go ahead and start then thank you so much i can't tell you how touched jen singleton and her family are by this gesture she's just really moved by the generosity
039and the commitment and the compassion to recognize damien for all he did for us so that's just really special um the next topic is a little more difficult um so i wanted to provide uh an update on where we stand with the mask mandate in new york and and you know provide an opportunity for the board to talk about kind of what happens next but i'll set the stage by saying as everybody knows uh governor hopkins lifted the statewide indoor business mass mandate for businesses effective february 10th she did not lift the mandate for several high density settings there's lots of them but schools are under that list she announced that the plans she plans to reassess the mask requirement in schools sometime in early march and she has a press release up on her
040website that she says the assessment will be based on public health data including cases per 100 000 residents percent positivity rates hospital hospital admission rates vaccination rates global trends and pediatric hospitalizations she has signaled the data are quote unquote moving in the right direction however she has not provided any benchmarks to say what number on any of those data points will be the number that is the determining factor or what combination of numbers um and i'll just point out that until the time the mandate is lifted masks are still required in school buildings and then a reminder the mask for the mandate for masks on school buses is actually established at the federal level so even if she were to lift the statewide mandate it's our understanding at this time that unless something changes at
041the federal level masks would still be required on buses so it's my understanding based on a meeting i had with all of my superintendent colleagues and four county commissioners of health that likely soon which i can't define the governor will lift the mandate for masks in schools one thing i heard from the commissioners from the four local counties it was albany schenecta and saratoga it is not likely that the state department of health will say okay counties now your job to figure out what the rule will be in your county which means that school districts will be left to figure out what do we do within our school districts when that time comes that the mass mandate is lifted i've spent a lot of time talking with our administrative team and our recovery task force
042that group that meets every tuesday um at 3 30 about well what would we or could we or should we do here in guilderland um and i'll just say what that recommendation is that at the point when they are no longer mandated by a higher authority that we would look to change our level of requirement to words that are to the effect of we highly recommend masks but we don't require them and i'm happy to talk about the whys for that if there are questions or comments or thoughts i mean i'm in agreement i just wanted to make reference to the public comments and some of the emails that we've been getting just that i know people are frustrated and have been writing us and just you know the second kind of what you said
043dr wells we're not in a position to make any changes we have to follow the governor's rules the district already tried to do that and put their district in jeopardy of funding so that's not a wise decision or something that we can control so i think people just need to be patient but i'm fully in support of you know once that mandate's lifted to changing it to recommended but not mandated that's speaking for myself i'll just one of the things that came out loud and clear from our building administrators is the enforcement of a mask mandate in the absence of kind of a higher authority you know by and large our school community has been really cooperative for example saturday night i was with a thousand other people in the large gym for the pops
044concert everybody had a mask no one get no one raised a an eyebrow about it um but in the absence of that our collective concern among the leadership team is that's all our people will be doing what's that our teachers will be doing what our administrators will be doing is and at what cost i mean i'm keenly aware of concerns about health but we don't want to lose learning opportunities we don't want to lose our work around social emotional well-being we don't want to lose work around dei because of it the other part of this is so masks are one part of our mitigation strategy they're not our whole mitigation strategy so between now and when this happens can we um up the ante on our other strategies ventilation providing additional ppe for those who
045do want to wear it i'm going to guess we'll have plenty of faculty who still want to wear masks and you know are there other things that we can do to um encourage you know safe coexistence within our buildings i agree with simon and you that i would hate for this to become a worsening distraction than it already is at this point um and by making it a recommendation versus a requirement i think is a reasonable um uh compromise but i do think it's important for us to point out that the public comments you know almost a million americans have died in two years from this virus a thousand children have died in america from this virus a thousand children do not die in two years from the cold um so equating it with just
046a cold and we should all get over it i think is a fallacy and i think we need to really point that out um and that by uh eventually going to a recommendation not a requirement does not negate that fact i just wanted to express that um i also just wanted to share a little bit about our vaccination status because i i'm hoping there are a lot of families who are watching this as you know we sent out a survey twice now trying to get data on the percentage of our school community are students who are fully vaccinated and currently we have we've heard from 2 700 of our staff of our families uh about 2700 of our students and of that 2700 90 are fully vaccinated however we haven't heard from 2800 families and
047we really would like to um whether um you know simply saying no we're not vaccinated but we believe that because that rate is 56 vaccination among our students we believe it's higher than that but we don't have the data to do that and the only other way for us to get that is to have one of our nurses sit in front of a computer and look up every single one of those students on the nicest platform which is the state's repository for that data go ahead barbara but just a quick question i've been asked by a number of people why do we need that data they thought it was sort of a personal thing and is the state requiring us to submit data like that or why why are we asking that question well i
048think part of it is to help us come to well where do we go next in the pandemic and um there was a sense from the governor's list of criteria that vaccination rates would play into what do we do with masks and i think to be able to i have no idea how many of our students are vaccinated puts us in a place where we can't be as confident so i think it would be very helpful for for us to know we have 80 90 60 whatever it might be and then look building by building as we're thinking about other mitigating factors if in fact masks are gone so um that's why we could i mean the information is available to us so it's not like it's private to a certain extent our nurses could
049certainly look it up if they need to and if we have to have that number to you know move the recommendation then you know that's probably something we're gonna have to do it'd just certainly be easier if we got that information from the parents easier and quicker yes and we talked earlier today about going to that plan of you know looking at looking up all those data points so um to your point nurses routinely look up vaccination records they look up vaccination records for mmr for all the school required vaccines and if a child is missing a school required vaccine that they look up in nicest they call the parent and say your child is due for their meningococcal vaccine call their pediatrician that happens all the time so my question is i understand it's
050a huge ordeal to look up 2 800 children but it does happen um and we've i think i could be wrong about this but i think we've hired additional per diem nursing staff to help with the crisis in january with the omicron variant which has been lessened to a great degree could we use some of that staff that's exactly what we talked about okay okay so we're looking at you know how busy is our testing center that's really come down so um we are going to use some of these personnel to do some of that work but there's still plenty of work for nurses to do right now so it it's not at all that they are with time on their hands all right any other questions on that uh yes all right um i
051think i just have one more [Music] thing that looks like it's on here twice um and that is um this is the draft of the 22 23 calendar there are no changes to it and we met with our stakeholder group on monday who also reviewed it and have no changes um technically it's ready to go i'm going to not ask the board to approve it tonight because it is contingent upon a signed memorandum of agreement with the guilderland teachers association and i would like to you know have that complete before we actually take action on this this question and i i'm sure i'm i'm not thinking right on this but i thought that election day was the first tuesday after the first monday it is so but we have a holiday on the first and
052not on the 8th it's a conference day it's ok i thought we did it on election day we often have but there was a strong sentiment that having the conference day the day after halloween would be a good oh that's right i remember we did discuss that i just thought it was always on election day it's often been that way but it worked out in a very persuasive group of people said please please please please please so no and i think that's an excellent idea i just thought wait a minute no we have not changed election day i thought i could be wrong you know maybe it's another holiday no no okay and it's and it's a conference day as opposed to right right no that that's fine so this will be up for action
053next maybe on march 8th and in between i'll work with um the teachers association to get that moa ready to go so that also needs to be approved by the board i believe so we'll do a package deal on march 8th that's the same item right twice all right it was so good it's on here twice okay thank you that's the end of my stuff thanks dr wiles uh next we have board president information we have a list of policies a through k anybody in policy one is make a note of anything for us to look at or as you read these over if you have any questions you know prior to the next meeting give maria myself a call and so we can address them you know before the meeting i just have a
054quick question i guess the um letter g about the communication between arnold monk is that a is that a um that's one that's been there yes okay any complaints about okay i'll read through them thank you is that it barb yep okay thank you next we have action items um school business management i'll turn it over to neil okay thank you dr rivera first time in this evening is a resolution to authorize the purchase of school buses and vehicles and they have a bond proposition for that on may 17 2022 as a reminder uh this amount of 976 000 will fund the purchase of eight replacement school buses okay can i have a motion to approve the resolution to authorize the school bus and vehicle bond proposition rebecca ii blanca and this is a roll
055call vote right that's correct okay oh sorry um all in favor too i don't know what got the motion sorry go ahead linda sorry this is blasia yes dr butterfield yes this is frederico yes this is gonzales parker yes mrs person yes dr rivera yes mr sabrin yes this is slack yes and this is toll hill yes wow there's a lot of background here you could attach a resolution to approve the sale or transfer of the cobblestone schoolhouse property can i have a motion to approve the sale i will make that motion barb second him kim any questions or comments all in favor pass is 9-0 next is a resolution to approve an installment purchase plan and that's to replace top ears eight top years within the district can i have a motion to approve
056the purchase agreement nate second kelly any questions or comments all in favor aye aye aye passes 9-0 and then finally this evening i pleased to announce the receipt of donations we received two donations one from the westmire pta and one from the pine bush pta for the purchase of playground equipment can i have a motion to approve these donations uh rebecca ii nate any questions or comments yep i'd like to abstain from this vote and just thank you to the um both ptas can i've um oh we already have emotion all in favor passes eight zero with one extension from kim basiac and that's it thank you neil next superintendent action dr wiles thank you i just have one action item this evening and this is the contract ratification with the guilderland support staff association
057and the resolution reads be it resolve the board of education authorizes superintendent of schools marie wiles to execute the proposed memorandum of agreement between the guilderland central school district and the guilderland support staff support services association of the guilderland school district for the duration of the collective bargaining agreement july 1 2021 to june 30th 2024. can i have a motion to approve the contract ratification kelly second rebecca any questions or comments all in favor pass is nine zero okay thank you dr weils next we have board president action we have a short list of policies a through c can i have a motion to approve the policies blanca second kim any questions or comments you all in favor passes 9-0 thank you next we have board committee reports we'll start with audit being scheduled for
058tomorrow morning at 8 30 and we'll hear the results of that next week thank you kelly next uh communications i think because of the background here i'm not going to be able to do the report there's too much noise can you hear me yeah yeah loud and clear you definitely okay then we'll try it uh we yes we we just met last week as soon as i turn this around here uh i won't get the first item we basically discussed the thought exchange and since murray gave that report that was basically our discussion also our communication specialist from boces provided us a follow-up on the discussion we had about the delivery of budget information and other information to residents who have post office boxes patrice spoke with a representative from the mailing house centron who
059provided some suggestions on how to better secure the delivery of materials they suggested working with the postmaster to address the issue itself there seems to be a need to include both a home address and a post office box on the item in order for it to get there but patrice will continue doing some research with the altamonte post office we then discuss what section one of the handbook we thought this would be a good time to just kind of review uh we thought we would recommend at the end of this process to the board we're not recommending now but we might recommend that ev every three years we kind of do this kind of thing we reviewed section one of the handbook uh the suggested changes included revising all of the his her references to
060them they as appropriate uh there's one change in the section responding to community members emails we wanted to add or vice president so it would the response could be from the president or vice president therefore it all wouldn't fall on the president to respond to every email under the section on visiting schools there were two changes in number seven we're changing guidance counselor to the term school counselor and the committee also recommended adding a new statement to visiting schools about when we attend the school as a parent that we should use our personal email account rather than our school account so we need to separate our identities by using our personal accounts when we are we are communicating as parents i reached out to blanca who could make it that meeting and to see if
061she had any other recommendations uh and she had none at that time next meeting we will do board two section two which is board meetings um we talked about having the handbook on the website our oc specialist explained that because of the accessibility issues we can't just post the pdf but she said another option is to post a contact person on the website for those who wish to receive a copy and we're going to go ahead and do that as soon as we're done with this review our next meeting is march 9th at 4 30. and that's it hey thank you gloria next business practices we met last week i believe and the first topic was we talked about the singleton uh scholarship and the second topic we uh john rizzo was there and i'm
062going to ask neil if he could just explain what what the calendar is on on that sure so the committee brought an issue to the committee really it's regarding our ending year fund balance the amount of operating funds that we have and it's really an issue this particular year we haven't had it in other years but there's two driving issues this year one is private transportation contracts we've had a shortage of drivers we've had to contract more for transportation services so unanticipated and a higher cost to do so that's one factor impacting uh this year's financial picture the second is tax certiorary settlements so these are challenges to assessments this happened in 2019 with guilderland when they did a town wide revaluation even though it's a few years later the big ones the commercial properties
063those take time to work through and uh we are working through those um the bigger that they are the more complex they are the longer it takes to work through those tax searches areas so we have paid some of them already but we have more to pay again they're the larger ones so what happens is there's either a settlement or a court judgment and we have to reimburse the property owner through a settlement so we've had to do that in a number of occasions we've got a couple of still large ones out there that we expect might hit this year that's also contributing to our operating deficit so we do have a way out of this it goes to our fund balance and reserves that money we set aside for situations like this where we
064have unanticipated expenses and we need to utilize those funds in order to access them though because we will likely exceed our our budget with some of these payments is that we would in conjunction with that have to amend our budget and there is a mechanism to do that in new york state so we would be coming back to the board and we're going we're going to let this run out because the final financial picture we still have a few months left in the school year we'll figure out exactly where we are and what we need to go forward with the step if we do need to make a budget amendment we will do so closer to the end of the year we'll have a firmer number to be able to do that and really all
065we're doing is we're temporarily amending our expenditures for the year and our revenues for the year it all balances out it doesn't affect us going forward we will revert back to our original budget when we start looking at next year so it's a temporary mechanism that allows us to manage these unex unanticipated expenses be able to address them and then reset going forward on a year basis it does not affect our tax heavy tax levy or tax cap it has no implications for that either because we are adding revenue at the same time we're adding expense thank you and we have not set a time for our next meeting correct hey thank you um the dei committee i don't know if gloria are you to kelly or gloria i asked gloria if she could do
066it because i was on the meeting however i was occupied the whole time um so gloria i don't mean to put you on the spot i might not have heard or got my email but um the minutes are online if anybody's would like to view them if gloria would like to or is able to uh give a summary that would be great i've had so many some technical problems here i couldn't even read i couldn't get to the documents i could probably do a quick update um just very briefly we um we heard from the four subcommittees and their work is ongoing the audit committee is continuing to look at some additional help to get the external equity audit completed some more more to come on that we also had an update on the land
067acknowledgement piece mike glaster and matt pinchenot have reached out to some of those communities are um to get their input on this is what we'd like to do what do you think and they haven't had a response yet so that that's also continuing we also had a lengthy discussion about multicultural observances really inspired by our students from the muslim muslim student association who provided public comment at our last regular board meeting we actually shared that with the dei committee when it meant when it met and we also shared kind of a comprehensive calendar of observances and we talked about how those can be how that could be a educational tool to raise awareness for the various observances that happen during the year that are not necessarily captured on our calendar so there's more to come
068on that we did talk about committee membership we're coming into march and it's time for about six or seven of our current committee members to roll off the committee at the end of their two-year term and then to recruit some new individuals so i think committee members were asked to let mrs sim know by march 15th if they're interested in rolling off the committee and then we'll start the process of recruiting and then we wrapped up with a conversation around the book that we're reading together the five practices for equity focused leadership and it was a chapter on routines for building effective and cohesive equity leadership teams uh happy to do it thank you dr wiles and last but not least i don't think i mentioned policy right no um we're taking a few week
069hiatus what this is a budget we'll meet in april wow the policy is resting okay thank you barb thank you barb um any board issues ideas and sharing oh i'm sorry first public comment number two lynn are there any more thank you um board issues blanca i just wanted to share that i went to the pops concert i think a couple of us did and i was really blown away by the performances and the level of talent and the level of enthusiasm both by the spectators and the students themselves it was really such a beautiful event and i really enjoyed the 80s theme from the attire to the music and i wanted to put a plug in there for 90s grunge next year barb this is just a follow-up from a parent that wrote to
070us about children going into honors as they enter high school or the accelerated courses and that's a very interesting question that i just wanted to share why aren't all students informed of the required demonstrated behaviors to be recommended for honors and you know we've had this discussion about limiting numbers of people that can take honors courses many many times over the last 10 or 15 years and the point that the letter writer suggested is that students get this a letter saying that they haven't been selected but they haven't been told the criteria before that and then the letter writer said now you've cast doubt on their abilities in the classroom and so i guess i just like our administrators and perhaps the board in some fashion to explore is it possible first of all to
071tell kids ahead of time what the requirements are to be nominated by their teacher to take these advanced placement courses and secondly can we do we have the finances the time or the the treasurer to expand access you know to those honors courses i think you know as you look over time it's very very difficult for a child that hasn't started that i guess you call it honors track or whatever to then suddenly they kick into gear sophomore year and i don't know how easy it is for them now to take the honors chemistry or something but mike is here so if he wanted to address that or address it in the future sometime just um it's just you don't want to restrict the students ability to succeed and it over the years it seems
072like you know we we will only give certain kids the option i understand that this year at least there was the ability of the child to challenge or the parents to challenge the assessment and you know give the child an opportunity i'm hesitant to answer this question just because it's a very complicated answer because it depends on a lot of different contexts of what we're talking about are we talking about seventh grade students getting selected for accelerated are we talking about eighth grade students getting selected for the honors classes in ninth grade or are we talking about the high school classes students in the honors class in the honors classes and going on to the next honors class or students are in the regions class trying to go into an honors class so there's lots
073of different variation in all of those one of the things i would say is i think the teachers it's a pretty generic expectation of what they're looking for they're obviously looking for academic performance in the class that they're in currently and it can vary depending on the class that they're in but they're also looking for active learners in the classroom students who are participating in actively in the discussions that are going on in those classrooms students that are asking questions or furthering a discussion or showing interest that goes deeper than even what's being discussed in the class those are the kind of observational things that the teachers are looking for um but again i think we've done like i can only speak specifically to the high school because when we're talking about the eighth grade
074and seventh grade i think it'd be better if they've responded to that but at our level what what we've been doing is the recommendations are made if this we ask that the teachers conference with the students and make them aware of why they were recommended or not recommended for the class and then we give them a time period to demonstrate those things that the teacher had not seen in the current class and they basically most of those recommendations are being these conferences are being done in december and the students have all the way to the end of the third quarter to demonstrate those skills so it's not a closed door you're never going to get in if the student demonstrates those skills or what the teacher is looking for the teacher notifies the counselor and
075the recommendation is changed and then even at the end of the process let's say the student doesn't meet the criteria that the teacher is looking for there is an override process to still get into those honors ap classes the only thing the only caveat we put to that is that is based on seed availability so we're not going to increase the number of sections to accommodate overrides but if there are seats remaining in there and they override it we do a lottery based on the number of overrides so that's kind of it in a nutshell but i don't know if i answered your specific question though a general way but um demonstrated behaviors that's such a vague thing you've mentioned some of those active participation in class and you know those types of things but
076could that be laid out for students at the beginning of the year by their teacher maybe you know when you have the parent night or whatever absolutely i always think we can be you know i also always think we can be clear about what we're looking for so yeah absolutely i think that's a great suggestion because again not every student's starting out in the honors they might not know what we're looking for like even if it's a region a student in english 10 regions who may want to go on to ap english literature or ap english language in 11th grade we could talk about what those teachers will be looking for if they're trying to go into that next level so absolutely i'm just oh go ahead and i was just going to respond to
077i think if you're talking about the specific email that we were mentioning before if i remember correctly there is definitely more of the the parent like the communication with the parent piece i think was mentioned but in just in general i'm in total agreement about the access piece at least more so for the middle school i'm just talking about from a parent hat on for a second because i know you know seventh grade they get a letter saying you know you might be selected for accelerated etc these are things behaviors that we're looking for and then it says and it will go on your permanent record and bold underline so as a you know 12 year old you're like oh my god this is serious which i guess is good but i also feel like
078they need to balance that with access about here are the you know here's what you could be doing if you also do do you know what i mean it's it just seems not so welcoming and i'm not saying you know it needs to be openly welcome to everybody but i do feel like it needs to be better balanced with the ex you know more inclusive that right now it just seems a bit more exclusive the way that it's presented to students but i do think what you're talking about if you're talking about that specific incident with the email i do think it was talking about um parents being informed because i don't know you know if everybody knows that like once that track kind of starts it changes the course it kind of changes the
079trajectory in high school of what courses are available or how many degrees of freedom that they can take things right so i i am in total agreement with that i just wanted to point that out you know just just add to this though because again like i said this is this is a very complicated thing and like i'll talk about from the other end sometimes we'll have parents who and students who want to challenge into a course and we commit that they're going to now okay say they're going to be in college physics in 11th grade and we make financial decisions as a high school based on the requests that people make and then we get a quarter into the year and they're struggling or they're not performing at the level that they want and
080now the concerns start to come up about well i'm not sure this grade is going to be what i want on my college transcript and then we get requests to go back to the regions class so so there it kind of cuts both ways if you make a commitment to that you're going to challenge this class we ask that you be in that class for the school year now again we we are we try to be flexible sometimes we get into situations where we're like this isn't in the best interest of the student we make changes but i just want to make it clear that it the door swings both ways you make a commitment we want you to honor that commitment and that may mean you're not getting a 95 in this class you
081might be getting an 80. and that's okay that's great but that isn't always okay to the family so okay thank you thanks mike i just want to add to you since you brought it up barb that um since we've talked about looking at policies before i and i don't know what the actual policy is about this he's with the um oh well okay um this would also be i think a great place and not saying this here because i know you know or even next year i know that everybody's overloaded with work themselves overnight them over the years have been successful so that was to me was a good sign thank you barb for mentioning it any um any other board ideas of issues and sharing blanca i just wanted to struggle back to the
082little group of students that we had earlier they asked us to pass a resolution or what do we what do we do about that um i asked if they could send um some information in an email about the result like so we could do some follow-up reading and then see what the potential next steps are okay so we'll talk about it yeah later got it and i don't remember when our next meeting is but i know that the musical is coming up in the high school and then also uh the mask uh musical at the middle school so i'll just put a promo out there that everybody should go as of right now it's in person and i hope it stays that way i'm super excited about that so um so i guess look out
083i'm sure that they'll probably be emails sent to families about that and how to purchase tickets etcetera okay cool okay any other board issues ideas and sharing okay can i have a motion to adjourn um judy second nate any questions or comments all in favor high pass is nine zero thank you everybody you