001number six letter a for the tax audit and i will pass it over to neil he's going to be presenting the audited financial statements for the year fiscal year ending june 30th and mike is up on the big screen and i think he's well it's almost on the brick screen and mike was uh actually watching our proceedings here before this part of the meeting and i offered him the opportunity to text him when we got closer to his his portion of the meeting and he said this is his favorite board meeting and he was happy to to watch our recognition awards so here we go see all set damien okay okay mike stage is yours back in person and um i know there's usually cookies tea you know everything for those award nights so i
002like that a lot but um each of you should have received a final version of the audit tonight it was bound and delivered today to the gilderon school district as per the five point plan for new york state i met with the audit committee i reviewed this document in great detail the audit committee's job is to make a recommendation to the board for acceptance of the audit and the audit committee asked me to come before the board to give some highlights from the audit the audit starts on page one and two we as a firm attach opinions to management's financial statements at the bottom of page one we say that the financial statements present fairly that is an unmodified opinion that is the highest opinion we have as a profession after that we have pages
003three through eleven those are management discussion and analysis gas b the governmental accounting standards board has standard number 34 that states how a financial statement has to be presented and one of the things they require is a management discussion analysis this has been in your financial statements for the past 15 years one of the issues with the md a though is it is mostly on the full accrual basis of accounting and we do not keep our books and records on a full accrual basis of accounting we keep our books and records on a modified basis of accounting so if you were to turn to page 12 i will give you a couple examples of what happens here so at the bottom of page 12 you can see that our total net position is a deficit
004of 132 million dollars no business no school district could operate if they're at a deficit of 132 million dollars one of the things that is required is a study of the future health insurance and we have a full accrual of that on our books which is actually 334 million dollars now new york state does not permit funding of this approval and this accrual can change drastically because it's based on the number of retirees the number of employees the current medical trend rates the contracts in place at this time so over time this could change quite a bit we as a district are what we would call pay as you go so each year when we build our general fund budget we put the health insurance for the retirees in there and the employees and we
005pay that as we go so that's pay as you go so that's one of the biggest differences between modified accrual and full crawl also in here up towards the top where it says total assets if you go up two lines you see net pension asset proportionate share and you go over and it's 6.6 million dollars so they make us study our pension systems each year we have two trs and ers our trs pension system for guilderland is found to be over funded by 6.6 million but again there is nothing we can do with this asset but put it on our polar code basis of accounting books we are not allowed to ask the teacher retirement system to take that as payment nor are we asking them to reduce our rate that we have to pay
006for each certificated employee and you know that's about nine cents per dollar so again we have this asset on our books but there is nothing we can do with it but overall a deficit net position of 132 million dollars if you go to page 14 you'll see quite a difference page 14 is one of the most important pages in the financial statement it is the balance sheet on june 30 2020 this is where the district wound up on june 30th 2020. it is set in funds as you see across the top the general fund the special aid fund school lunch fund debt service fund and capital fund the general fund the first column accounts for almost all of the activity that happens in the school district you can see that we have about 17 million
007dollars almost 18 million dollars in assets 6 million dollars in liabilities the difference is what we call fund balance gasby 54 says there's five categories of fund balance the first category committed we're not allowed to use the second is non-spendable and we have about forty eight hundred dollars in there all that is is it's in a form other than cash so it's non-spendable the second category that we use is called restricted and you can see that we have several restricted fund balances these are either permitted by new york state education law or general municipal law and each of these is further defined in the notes on page 32-35 i'll go through a couple of these quickly though the capital reserve only 71 000 in it that is a very restrictive reserve it takes voter approval
008to fund it takes voter approval to spend so very restricted the second one the reserve for employee benefit liability almost a million dollars that is only to be used for sick or vacation time when somebody leaves the district it cannot be used for an incentive then we have a tax search wearing reserve it's a very important reserve we have a lot of people that would like to reduce their property tax values and there's a chance that we will either have to pay some of those tax dollars that we received in the past back so we can utilize that reserve we have an unemployment insurance reserve that reserve also very important school district if we had to lay off a employee although new york state would pay the claim quarterly we have to pay new york
009state back then we have an ers retirement reserve that reserve can only be used for the employee retirement system and it's used to if the fluctuation in rates happen we can tap that reserve so it doesn't affect our budget the newest reserve and it's two years old now is the next one it's the trs retirement reserve and you can see there's about 1.6 million dollars in there the gildan school district has about a 40 million dollar trs salaries for the year and we can put two percent in per year up to ten percent so that is two years worth about eight hundred thousand dollars a year we have a workers comp reserve that is used for worker comp items and then we have a reserve for repairs this only has 58 000 in it this
010is another pretty restrictive reserve we have to have a public hearing if we're going to use it if we don't have the public hearing we have to replace it equally over the next two years then we have the third category that we use the word assigned there's ninety seven thousand dollars in assigned fund balance that is the amount of purchase orders that were outstanding at june 30th those automatically increase next year's budget so we have the money to spend for those items we've purchased then we have assigned appropriated that is the amount of money that we are saying out of our fund balance we are going to give back to the taxpayers the taxpayers have voted on an expenditure budget our revenue budget we say is going to fall short of that by 638 thousand
011dollars so that is kind of balancing the budget and then the last one is unassigned and there's 4 million 121 308 that's a very important number that is exactly 4 of next year's budget and that is exactly what is allowed under real property law 13 18. but that 4.1 million dollars is going to be a very important number that i'm going to show you later on in the report the second column special aid fund you see it has zero fund balance the reason it has zero fund balance is because we are given grants um special education grants like 611 619 title one these type of grants we have to spend the money and then the federal government or the state government will reimburse us so the revenue and expenditure equal and we have no fund
012balance then we have our school lunch fund and you can see that we have about 486 thousand dollars in our lunch fund this is um getting to be a little bit of a concern we did have a profit in our school lunch fund of about 24 000 so new york state education department has a rule they kind of like to see no more than three months worth of your expenditures in your fund balance right now we're slightly over that but again that can change if we need a piece of equipment you know a new stub new fridge something in the school lunch fund that could drastically drop our fund balance quickly then the fourth column is the debt service fund the debt service fund has 720 000 in it sounds like a pretty healthy amount
013of money but right now we have about 25 million dollars in long-term debt and next year our total debt payments interest and principal for long-term debt is 3.8 million so obviously that 720 will not even cover you know about a quarter of our next year's debt payment then the last column you see that it has a fund balance of negative 1.6 million dollars this is how capital funds operate if you look up in the middle of the page you see bond anticipation note 3163 860. that is a temporary financing source it's not permanent so when we do pay down the buses we bought or we do bond the construction that we're doing that will reduce the deficit fund balance back to zero and the capital fund will go away if we're not buying buses we're
014not doing a project and right now we're doing the smart school bond act also in there but that whole column goes away if there are no projects going on so overall on a modified accrual basis of accounting you see that our total fund balance all the way over to the right is 11 million 215 242 converse the 132 million dollar deficit on the fuller pool so you can see there's quite a difference between full accrual and modified accrual accounting okay after that we have several pages of notes to the financial statements the note for financial statements were unchanged for this year because there were no new gas fees that affected school districts for 2020. if you turn to page 49 you will see that our final budget was 101 million dollars for revenue and we
015brought in 101 million dollars i cannot express enough how good of a job of budgeting this is it is very important that a district can predict its revenues because when a district has a shortfall in revenues and expends more than it takes in that wipes out all of that fund balance we talked about in the general fund but the one issue here that i pointed out to the audit committee and i just wanted to make sure the board was aware if you look in the middle of the page our state sources of revenue and this includes boces aid lottery aid foundation aid is 25 million dollars on 100 million if the state did cut twenty percent that would be about a five million dollar cut to the gilderland school district and as i told you
016we had about four million dollars in our real property law 1318 unassigned fund balance so this is where there could be some issues coming forward now again i am presenting on a june 30 2020 year end everything looks great but there are pitfalls that could happen coming up so i just wanted to point that out page is the other side this is the expenditure side and you see we if you look in the middle column down towards the bottom we spent 100 million dollars this year that's 98 of what the voters approved so we significantly spent our budget if we did have that cut we would then have to take into account how much fund balance we would eat up just to maintain the current programs that we have in building okay so after that
017page 54 very important at the bottom of the page you see that percentage of four percent that is the calculation of real property law 1318 and that is how we determine that our unassigned fund balance can be 4121 308 as i showed you on page 14. then if we move forward to page 58. because this is a yellow book audit a governmental audit we have to give an independent auditor's report on internal controls over financial reporting and here this is also an unmodified opinion the highest opinion that we have is a profession and i can't stress enough how how well your business office performs you know neil and john and their staff they give us everything we need we don't have a journal entry to propose they're very prepared they're on top of the situation
018of what's going on so this is an unmodified opinion there is no issues that we find with the controls over financial reporting then on page 60 we have the third opinion from western company because the district receives more than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in federal aid so that's reimbursement for school lunch that's six eleven six nineteen those special education grades title one we have to do what's called a single audit and here again an unmodified opinion we didn't find any issues with the grants that are at the gilderland school district page 62 actually lists out that 2.2 million dollars what's going to happen with this page is after the board accepts the audit neil and i are going to certify the federal portion of this and we're going to ship this off to
019jefferson indiana so it can be in the clearinghouse for the federal government then after that we have our last opinion from westin company that's on page 66. because the board of education has oversight over the extra classroom activity funds we have to give an opinion on it and audit it here we do have a qualification of our opinion and we audit five boces in 31 school districts and they all have this qualification of opinion all this says is we audit from when the money goes in the bank and from when the check is written we can't be at every event we don't know if the kids really watch 10 cars 12 cars 20 cars we take it from when it's deposited and when it goes out now i know that this year ended rather quickly
020in march and one of the things is all the clubs are listed out on page and 70. and normally when we look at these clubs we look at the receipt and disbursement column and we see if there's no receipts and no disbursements so zeros in both columns and then we consider those clubs firstly and active we just asked the board each year take a look at those ones that are fiscally inactive find out if they're still you know meeting maybe they didn't fundraise maybe they didn't spend any money there's several of them and if they are fiscally inactive usually the board closes them so the board is not paying an advisor out of the general fund to advise a club that is not operating and that is a brief overview of the hours we spent
021the committee but i didn't know if there's any questions from the board or anything the board would like to go over okay can i have a motion to accept um the audit barb second judy any other questions or any questions just thank you to neil and john for doing such a great job making our job easy um all in favor aye oh i'm sorry it's a roll call vote that's okay yes yes yes yes it passes 9-0 thank you neil all right so we'll go back up to the top of just thank you um or did he leave john leaf or mike leave thank you mike thank you very much have a nice night thank you you too thanks mike okay so we'll go back up to the top of the agenda and public comment
022we had one public comment come in the email i'll just read it to whom we may concern i would like to voice concerns and frustrations over how remote learning is going unfortunately my work schedule does not allow me to make it to the school board meeting tonight i would like to first acknowledge that trying to educate young children during this pandemic is extremely challenging and i understand the stressors and all educators this is unchartered territory we have three children in the gildowan school district seventh grade fourth grade and second grade our concerns are the following one multiple formats for getting completing and submitting work for all classes results in confusion we have had teachers advise work was incomplete and when we investigate the teacher acknowledges the work was submitted and verified it is very hard
023to see what is done number two on professionalism when reviewing comments and emails from one teacher his subject to my daughter was disappointed with regards to not having an assignment turned in when reviewing in google classroom she asked for help finding a document and the teacher's comment back was it is there in his comments also is no more missing work we found these comments to be unprofessional and aggressive we reached out to the teacher to have a conversation and he declined and wanted to resolve via email very unprofessional also there were grammatical and spelling errors in his email and comments i find this concerning coming from a teacher number three attendance there are time limits for children to log in or they are marked absent however teachers are forgetting to make the link active and
024kids cannot log in in time number four for music one assignment was to watch multiple videos on learning to play the piano but we do not have a piano i hope and i expect my comments reach the necessary leadership i would be happy to meet or have a phone conversation about these concerns sincerely dr mark winter i think we can follow up on these in this email we don't have any other um public comments linda right they came in okay thank you all right next on the agenda we have the consent items that includes the minutes from the september 15th in the september 23rd meeting the cpsc and csc recommendations personnel action financials and textbooks can i have a motion to accept the consent agenda kelly second hello gloria any questions or comments barb the
025textbook um e okay and vote on it separately okay have a discussion okay so we can look at then consent items a through d i have i wasn't at the 23rd meeting for which i apologize okay are you on are you listed we have to amend that are you not going to vote on i think i i didn't look exactly at that part but i know i wasn't at that meeting yeah oh yeah so maybe it needs to be okay yeah marxist is present so we can adjust that yeah okay thanks judy all right so we'll vote on consent items a through d any other questions or comments you're all in favor all right i passes 9-0 okay so we pulled out to uh letter e textbooks um this is a trade book and the
026motion to accept the textbook then second rebecca and barb you said you had a question yeah i i really don't feel that it would be advantageous to our kids to have that as as part of their curriculum i found it very divisive and i have a few quotes from the book that sort of jumped out to me the gentleman author or authors attempt to give a non-history of racism i guess is basically the bottom line and one of the things that jumped out at me after he got to the abolitionist movement and this is a quote abolitionists urge the newly freed people to go to church regularly learn to speak proper english learn math adopt trades get married stay away from vices smoking and drinking and basically live what they would consider to be respectable
027lives basically live like white people the author believes this advice was racist because it said that black people couldn't be accepted as themselves and that they had to fit into some kind of white mold he then goes on to state that a racist idea is any idea that suggests something is wrong or right superior or inferior better or worse about a racial group non-tag racist idea is any idea that suggests that racial groups are equals both segregationists and assimilationists think black people are to blame for racial inequity both the segregationists and assimilationists think there is something wrong with black people and that's why black people are on the lower and dying end of racial inequity the assimilationists believe black people as a group can be changed for the better and the segregationists do not the
028segregationists and the assimilationists are challenged by anti-racists the anti-racists say there is nothing wrong or right about black people the anti-racist tried to transform racism the assimilation has tried to transform black people and the segregationists try to get away from black people the author dismisses booker t washington and webb the bull says assimilationist and his basic thesis i think if i'm interpreting him correctly is that people of color who have been successful have only been successful because they've given up their what he calls sort of black roots and imitated white people which he thinks is wrong and i just think back to you know my grandparents and great grandparents who came from you know in my case poland in my husband's case italy and germany czechoslovakia um they came and they assimilated and but still
029maintain their cultural heritage there are still you know italian-american societies and they're still polish american societies but none of them felt that it was wrong to be successful to go to church to be married to do these kinds of things and i just find tossing something like that out to young students who haven't had the life experience that a lot of us have had i just see it as a step backward being as old as i am i was involved in the civil rights movement of the 60s and the whole idea there was to bring the races together to give everybody equal opportunity and now what i see this book suggesting in fact there are there are quotes from farrakhand and others that i can read maybe later after other people had a chance to
030speak that basically are asking for a separation of the races which to me as i said is a step back in history i i just don't see the value of presenting this book without at least a counter argument or a counter text that would show that as martin luther king said you know let's judge people by their character not by the color of their skin and i just wanted to open up the discussion because in all honesty i i just couldn't buy the the negativism of christianity and uh of the assimilations the people have been successful in taking advantage of what is available in this country uh it's such a downer to read it um and you know what i would point out you know i i think our school district is sort of hopefully
031on the cutting edge of repairing some of the the holes in our curriculum the contributions that black individuals have made to our society you know over the years what slavery really entailed and how it hurt people an emphasis on exploring african history and the countries you know in that area of the world uh we already have curriculum people working on this it was brought to our attention and you know the administration jumped on it immediately a book like this i i just just don't see as a productive plus um you know for our for our young students but i have other things but i'll let other people speak first is anybody else have questions or comments ben um so i'll piggyback off of barbara and you know my main criticism of the book is uh
032just the lack of critical thinking that demonstrates or or that it alludes to right i mean i think we can agree that we don't do a great job of teaching critical thinking in our schools and you know and this book really doesn't help um in the introduction it says i'm no math whiz but if black people make up 13 of the us population then black people should make up somewhere close to of the americans killed by the police and somewhere close to 13 percent of the americans sitting in prisons and you know there's nothing in nature that would suggest that proportions have to be held you know africa has a larger landmass than europe europe has more coastline in chicago blacks commit about 80 percent of all shootings and murders and white's less than two
033percent despite both representing a little less than a third of the city's population so would we expect a proportion a proportional amount of prison cells to be filled by the races when they're not committing crimes in the same proportion page 61 briefly mentions haiti which had an uprising of slaves um and has been uh you know uh i guess not an african-american but but black people have uh you know governed haiti since that revolution and thomas sol a prominent black economist makes the point that if discrimination with a solar decisive factor explaining group disparities we should expect the descendants of african slaves in haiti to be far better often than the descendants of african slaves in the united states uh haiti after all has been an independent nation for two centuries in which the huge
034black majority has been politically and economically dominant in the u.s blacks are a minority slightly more than one-eighth of the population subjected to various forms of discrimination since the 13th amendment outlawed slavery and yet it is the haitians who are the poorest and american blacks who are the most prosperous in the western hemisphere and in the world and you know just to echo some of barbara's points william lloyd garrison w e b dubois frederick douglass booker t washington are all listed in this book are as assimilationists um the boy is an assimilation assimilationist because he went to harvard and was determined to succeed uh so there's no heroes to root for in this book and i think that's what barbara was getting at when she said it was you know not fun to read the
035only unqualified endorsement of an individual that i could find was for angela davis who is apparently opposed to black imprisonment but is supportive of imprisonment of political dissidence and you know the smithsonian earlier this year put up a graphic on its website with material from the book white awareness handbook for anti-racism training by judith katz and it labels traits like the nuclear family frugality punctuality and objective rational linear thinking as white attributes or characteristics rather than simply the multicultural fusion of practices that have proven to be keys of upward mobility for many diverse ethnic groups around the globe and throughout the world so you know i i share barbara's concerns and and wonder really this is the text that we want to be introduced introducing into our curriculum okay other comments or questions oh this
036goes up there oh i'm saving our arms i'm waving your arms i'm assuming that means do you have a comment i think so you have to understand yourself hi how about can you hear me now yes yeah um so diversity is very important to me as is racism as a person of color um i feel like sometimes i read these things through a different lens and all that being said i actually share the opinion of barbara and ben some of their points and i i did leave the book feeling like it was one-sided and feeling like it basically attacks any kind of cultural norm that there is now or or labels it as you know racism and so i'm concerned that that sends a mixed message of basically if you quote unquote do well in
037life then you're some kind of failure when it comes to being conscious or anti-racist so i i also struggled with this book i did read parts of it twice um abraham lincoln for instance was described in a way that i've heard before but there was no attempt to give it a historical context so i just feel like it's very one-sided and looking at it as an educator i don't feel that it's that valuable unless it was you know the students read it and then read something else a different view at the same time or there was a big discussion but i i tend to agree with what barb and ben said okay other comments or questions uh rebecca um you know i just respectfully just disagree with your opinions um i didn't i read it
038several months ago so i honestly don't remember it nearly in the detail that you both provided but i really enjoyed it i i didn't think it was a downer i thought it was really interesting and illuminating um my 14 year old is reading it now and there's definitely parts that he you know had questions about and didn't necessarily agree with and it really engendered this great conversation just like this conversation that's happening right now and i think it's for the ela curriculum right not the history curriculum so and it says right in the first couple pages if i remember correctly that it's not a history text right so i think if the point is to to generate conversation that's actually really positive um and it would help you know teenagers critically think about all of
039these issues so that they can have this great discussion in an english classroom so i would be in favor of keeping it um kelly uh yeah along the same lines of rebecca um our children are blind they they see what's going on in news they see all these things how great would it be to kind of have this out there so they can have these something to to talk about something to have we have a whole civil discourse you know group that could you know be engaged with this book it i think it would be a disservice not to provide it to them so they can have something that they can discuss i think it's against our our board goal which we're about to approve here of of uh you know encouraging uh focusing on
040diversity and equity i think focusing on it includes educating and encouraging thoughtful and yeah maybe controversial conversations but that's part of you know growing up it's part of me it's part of now i when i read it a couple of months ago um i didn't think of a lot of the things that they thought about that they presented in the book and now i think about them do i agree with them i'm not quite sure yet but it's definitely uh changed the my uh filter or you know my sense of of going about in the world um in a positive way so i think it's okay to present yes it's not like god is a history book but we have tons of history books that have you know i'm not saying one-sided but a set
041of history you know that we've all read and we all learned about why can't we present a little bit different side of it and let people discuss it i don't think we should censor it it's out there we know about it it's it's it's helping people navigate through a challenging time okay gloria you have your hand raised uh i just want to say i i agree with kelly and rebecca in that sense because i think it's a voice that's probably strange to some of us uh some of the ideas were probably off-putting because we don't think that way but i think it's a voice that we need to hear uh we we owe it we owe it to our community to uh to to challenge ourselves to listen to these voices and i think i
042i have to hand it to the to the staff who proposed it because i think it would provide i mean i felt myself wanting to talk to people i can only imagine what a classroom would be like uh the discussion that would be engendered because it challenges so much of what uh the vast majority of white people might might accept but i think it's a voice that we need to hear and before we make any decisions i think we should really uh kind of talk further with the staff that are proposing it but because i i think it's a powerful book i read the other one that was meant for adults which i found amazing but um i found this one for young people very challenging but i think we need to challenge it this
043is an issue that we need to challenge ourselves on um my thoughts i think it would be irresponsible to to use it without a teacher but it's being used in a classroom with a teacher who is experienced and will be navigating the conversations that are important and i don't think the the point of the book is to indoctrinate i don't think you have to agree with it but instead just to get students to think critically about it so having these conversations not necessarily agreeing with everything and if i remember correctly there was a phone call i was not on um i know barbie were on it with a recent alumni who talked about all of her racist experiences that she had at gilderland not too long ago and i remember i think at a board
044meeting we talked about it and you said barb that you were shocked by all of it and i remember my response was i wasn't shocked by any of it so i think i don't know who mentioned it just viewing through you know different lenses of how we what we take away from the book just that alone can incite some really interesting and powerful discussion in a classroom so i i'm also really not here to ban books that's just it would have to be something very extreme for me not to for me to ban a book and so that's that's just my perspective blanca hi yeah sorry so i just wanted to add i i feel like this book could be used in like a 10x or 11x format i don't know if that still exists
045because when i was there eons ago in mr milligan and miss leggy's class we would read really really difficult uh content but then we would have a really great conversation about it and that's the piece that i think you're talking about sema that's essential if this is going to work i would hate to just say it's fine and then wonder how it's going to be used later or if it's going to be discussed like you seema i am opposed to censoring i feel like there's value in everybody's opinion but this in particular is such a delicate issue i wouldn't want to add fuel to the flame so i would hope there would be a thoughtful discussion afterwards uh judy and then ben i you know looking back from quite a few months ago when i
046read it i i guess i look at it in the hand thinking it's a difficult and delicate conversation but in the hands of a good teacher so if we don't just say okay you know this this is what what you're going to teach with without knowing that our teachers are strong enough to um listen and and help with with conversations i think that it's it's good and i'm not in favor of banning books i but it needs to be carefully uh presented or carefully discussed wisely discussed i mean okay uh ben and then back to kelly so uh you know i agree with everything that everyone's said and you know i'm not a censor either um i don't think anyone is saying to ban the book bot wants to throw it in the library for
047you to do that the question is should it be a classroom use should it be a part of the curriculum so you know just wanted to clarify that point uh kelly did you have your hand raised um i did i don't know who was next but you can go and then barb um i don't think i don't think racism is delicate like i don't it's it's everything you just turn a tv on and like it's in your face constantly i don't i don't think you need to tiptoe around it in fact i don't think you should tiptoe around it i mean maybe we shouldn't you shouldn't be in a historical classroom but maybe maybe we could hear a little bit about maybe more of the context that would be in so people could be more
048comfortable with it but i think to give our students a little bit more credit that they should be talking about it and and you turn tv on any news station any second give it five minutes and they're gonna hear something about something that's mentioned in the book that's all i have to say barb i have no problem with discussing racism but you know here's another quote when they're talking about a group of artists who got together and um you wanted to show the black experience and the author says whether white people saw them as humans or not they didn't see them as human black people were symbols animals and ideas to be feared do we really want to tell our kids that this was the experience of the vast majority of people i i've never
049heard these people referred to as symbols or animals or ideas to be feared he goes on to discuss malcolm x and applause his ideological transformation from assimilationist to anti-white separatist to anti-racist uh he argues that white people weren't born racist america was built to make them that way he criticized black assimilation as calling them puppets especially the leaders who had exploited their own people to climb the white ladder to me it just isn't a fair analysis of what has happened in life he discusses the brown versus board of education and he says all the schools began to mix what's really interesting about this case though something really discussed is that it's actually a pretty racist idea i mean what it basically suggests is that black kids need a fair shot and a fair shot is
050only in white schools the assumption was that black kids were as intelligent because they weren't around white kids um it's those kinds of quotes and ideas that he's he's throwing out there that i just i guess i don't believe they were his opinions and they're purely opinions i i don't see it based on any substantive news reporting from the 1800s that black people were symbols and animals and ideas to be feared when brown versus the board of education occurred in 54 the whole point was to provide every individual in this country with an equal education to the degree that finances permitted i lived through an era in the 60s when i personally experienced it coming from a little town that really didn't have any black population going to boston in school and then being asked
051to lead a girl scout troop in roxbury which was an all-black troop and the horror stories about their educational experience versus less than four miles away in another boston district of what those kids had in the way of textbook desks these kids had to share desks they had to share textbooks and yet four miles down the street that to me was what the civil rights movement you know was sort of all about and good for that everybody in this country should be equal we shouldn't be looking to to become an anti-white separatist or you know separate our races um this has always been the big melting pot and granted there were inequities in the system but they weren't in at least in this day and age we are trying to bring people together we are
052not trying to bring people apart and everybody have their own you know black caucus asian caucus native american caucus white caucus i mean that is my problem i have no problem with people discussing racism um all the inequities that may have occurred in the past but the whole emphasis in this book is just a lot of his opinion as to what people believed in in the 1800s early 1900s etc and i just i just as i said have a have a hard time accepting that that's good you know to be presenting to students when it's a one-sided point of view he writes something from thomas soule who totally disagrees with this author and i guess would be called an assimilationist because he has become successful and uh i don't know i just want to end
053with one one sort of happy thought well i guess it's sort of a heavy thought i was watching tv i just say this the spray system issue was everywhere but the gentleman was holding a sign and he said the only thing that should be separated by color is laundry the only thing that should be separated by color is laundry and so i i leave it at that as i said i i can't support the book i just found too many things that i thought would be damaging to to all kids without a balanced textbook curriculum guide that would present maybe from the standpoint of assimilationists how they felt and examine history so again thanks for the opportunity gloria um you had your hand raised well i i just want to say that any history you
054read is coming from someone's perspective any history so as we have read this book we're bringing our own perspective to it and i think we need to be very careful and examine our perspective and i think this book challenges us to do that you may not agree with it i didn't agree with it but it made me think about things and i think this issue needs to be confronted and thought about it's not going to be everybody's going to you know be la la la and agree on everything we're listening to a point of view that's very hard to hear but i really think we need to hear it and i think we need to trust our staff because and i agree with vodka because my daughter was in those classes those classes in the
055high school the the civil discourse classes the history classes the la classes you know we have to trust our staff that if they're choosing to do this book then they're they're doing it in a professional way i mean i'm sure you can probably go in and sit in on a class if you want because i've done that in the past but uh we've done we this has come up before with books that we need to trust our staff they're not giving us the book so that we're going to pass it out or leave it in a library shelf to some kid to pick up and read without guidance they're actually going to use it uh and i think there's a lot to be learned from this book other comments or questions luciano so my thoughts
056are this book is very it's very um covers an expansive period of time so it's not the author says it's not a historical book but it's historical recounting of the history united states and so obviously it's not a not a big book it's pretty short read and so to fit all that information and time into such a small book i think there's a lot of facts and events that are that are left out maybe not intentionally but just because of the fact that it is meant to be a shorter read so if it's going to be used in english class i think it would be i think discussion is excellent we need to have that we need to have discourse perhaps they could use short excerpts from the book you don't have to read the
057whole thing just because it is so it is such a complicated topic history is not simple um and this is a very pointed retelling if it's not a historical book then is it the author's opinion and how do we tell the difference between what's historical fact and what's the author's opinion so i do trust our teachers and i do want our students to have conversations but i don't think this book is the only way to inspire those and i i don't necessarily agree with all of the points that were made in the book and i don't believe that we should be presenting it to our students as part of our curriculum okay other comments or questions kelly would last obviously know how i feel about it i don't think it's up to us as a
058board to decide if we agree with what's in the book or we don't agree with what's in the book i think we should leave it up to the teachers and and the students to read it and let them have their discord have their discussions about it i think they'll learn a lot about it i also agree that you know this book came up on our agenda to vote on because a teacher brought it up and i don't think uh i have faith that the teacher brought it up to to use it in a way that's productive in their class and like i think i mentioned before not to indoctrinate anybody but to have these discussions and um like i mentioned i'm not here to to ban these books i have faith that the teachers and
059the students can have that higher level discussion that we'd want them to have here in high school before they leave and go on to discuss other difficult uh sensitive topics so uh that's my view any other last thoughts ben i have a last thought oh god oh ben and then and then blanca just to clarify something that was said it's 100 the board's role to the curriculum in our schools um that that that's our say so i don't have to agree with it i don't have to like i don't have to no you don't have to agree with in the book but but it's within the board's description i mean that's why this is a vote because uh it is it is up to the board whether this is part of our curriculum i mean
060we're here to support anti-racist work that's already being done at school and then to come and try and vote against this book looks i think absolutely ridiculous on our part and like kelly mentioned we're voting on some other things tonight that are also looking at inequity and diversity also topics that are not easy to discuss that impact all of us in different ways so i think it would be totally hypocritical to sit here vote the opposite way for a book that brings up all of these topics that we're saying we're supporting blanca go ahead um i was gonna say something similar seema so word that's fine new thoughts ben yeah i mean just to clarify off of your point i don't think that anyone here who's spoken in opposition to this book is opposed to
061the anti-racist work going on in our schools we disagree that this book furthers those goals okay so any other comments or questions barb just just a repeat the one that caught me the most why would anybody object to people learning go to church speak proper english learn math adopt trades get married stay away from vices smoking and drinking and basically live what would they consider to be a respectable life i i don't understand why any of those things in today's day and age if they were follow wouldn't make for a better society i mean i think it's a great question barb that could probably be discussed in class once they read the book and i'm sure there are other students that agree with you and others that disagree but they won't even have that opportunity
062to discuss that without reading the book you know this i don't remember which teacher brought this up but obviously they you know were thoughtful in putting this on uh their curriculum so they could have these in-depth discussions could we at least ask the the staff to present an assimilationist point of view also so that there be a counter balance and not just hate white people because they've done all these things in years past i mean i'm not going to you can you could do what you'd like thank you okay any other comments or questions okay all in favor yes to approve the book i'm sorry to prove the book so it's five seven so seven uh and in those reaching nay on barb so it passes seven seven two sorry okay next in the agenda
063information items uh dr singleton okay thanks very much uh well i have another book for you talk about this one next time so the title of this book is uh the bus 57 and this is a book presented for your information this is written by dashka slater and it is for use in english 11 and the review form is there as well and i will be upfront with you this also presents some controversial discussions and difficult conversations but um again i think are reflective of some of our goals to make sure that we are inclusive of all students in our district uh so that's for your review we'll talk about that next time my second item just a little good news sharing item for you uh we had a school to work student a couple
064of students actually who are using a portable uh farm stand to offer vegetables and flowers from the gulliland high school organic garden and i've included a photo of 10th grader richard little with a beautiful cart of sunflowers and i have to say i purchased the biggest zucchini i've ever seen in my life so they've been doing some really great work and i think it was worth celebrating so shared with you and last another bit of good news for you so each year we have thousands of student musicians from all over new york state who compete for the opportunity to be selected for the nisma conference all state music ensembles only a very small percentage of those who audition my mass keeps going in my mouth here driving me crazy are granted the honor of participating
065in this prestigious event students are accepted will perform with the best high school musicians from across new york state and under the baton of some of the finest conductors in the country and we're proud to announce that four of our gildalon high school students were recognized for their exemplary performances and they include morgan dempsey of mixed chorus aiden doyle instrumental jazz great grace linninger of symphonic band and vivian redmond from the symphony orchestra this year instead of spending four days rehearsing in rochester with gifted students from across the state students will rehearse with their conductors online culminating in a virtual performance admission to these highly selective groups is usually based on upon the score received the previous spring during the nismus solo evaluation festival where each student performs before a certified adjudicator who carefully evaluates
066every aspect of their performance however like so many things due to the covet 19 pandemic nismos solo festivals were canceled in the spring so nisma elected to use student scores from the previous year to fill out this year's ensembles and of course we want to extend congratulations to the musicians their teachers and parents for this outstanding accomplishment so well done okay thank you damian next is school business information neil thank you very much seema first item this evening is the timetable for staff involvement board consideration public information and vote on the 2021-22 budget so even though it's early in this school year it's not unusual for us to be already thinking about the budget for next year it's really an eight-month process that we start in october and end in may so i'll just provide
067some of the key dates many of these impact our community so we want to make sure we share them so at our next meeting next board meeting on october 20th that'll be the first opportunity for the public to have input into the budget process on december 8th we will be asking the board for their direction on march 2nd we will have the release of the superintendent's budget on march 30th the board will hold their budget work session on april 13th we have a budget adoption by the board of education and on may 18th the budget vote in school board election all of these dates are contingent upon having a somewhat normal year so things could change hopefully they won't but if they do there will be adjustments to the schedule but hopefully we'll keep to
068this to the timeline that i've shared next item this evening is an award i'm pleased to announce that the school school lunch director megan beck assistant facilities director ellen tossing high school secretary dawn weir linwood elementary teacher christine grope and community member amanda cutler were named recipients of the september 2020 beyond the call covet 19 award by the albany county legislature in establishing the monthly recognition chairman andrew joyce stated every day we hear about someone or a group of people who went out of their way to help the community by providing food to extensional workers distributing ppe supplies or just by extending a helping hand without these selfless individuals many people were impacted by the virus would not have gotten the help they needed this award is just the small way that we can extend
069our gratitude for what they did during these last few months and to provide some context for the group of individuals from our schools share a little bit of data with you so from the onset of the school closure in march and until the resumption of school in september a total of just shy of a hundred and eighty thousand breakfast and lunches that's five thousand meals that were prepared two times a week were provided to students in need in addition to recognizing the extraordinary efforts of megan ellen dawn christine and amanda i want to recognize and thank the many staff and community volunteers that helped to prepare package and deliver those meals we could not have provided for those most vulnerable without the partnership and support of these many volunteers from our school community again this
070just speaks volumes of our community and their willingness to help out in times of need i've also included a link to the albany county legislature legislature virtual meeting where this was announced it actually puts you at the right spot in the meetings like an hour and a half meeting so if you click on the link you'll get rid of the part where they where they do the recognition but again very very pleased for that recognition for our staff well well deserved too they've certainly done quite a job yeah that's great thank you neil next we have a school board or sorry board president information the first item is the nisba voting delegate guide um so it's all here this is a reminder you need to turn this your i think you get a google form
071to fill out for the voting guide and that's due by october 14th so we can discuss it at the next meeting which i think is october 20th any questions about that the next item uh is the list of policies and we'll be pulling one out and to suspend the rules to vote on it but any um anything we should be looking at from the the policy committee anything specific no this is just a first read okay so i'll make a motion then to suspend the rules to vote for um this is uh one nine zero zero the family the parent and family engagement uh policy i think this needs to be um go into the essa plan and so we need to uh move ahead and vote on it tonight if that's okay with everybody
072second barb the second judy any um questions or comments you all in favor aye aye aye passes nine zero thank you barb next we have the handbook for better school board operating procedures i think this is uh just for information now gloria do you want to add anything no we had said that uh i did not get anything from anybody regarding any changes for uh sections three four and five so unless somebody had something and forgot to send it to me i'm assuming those sections were okay okay thank you gloria that's it for me moving on to action items school business neil thank you next item this evening is the recommendation to award um or to approve agreements for federal idea flow through funds and we have a number of schools for which that applies
073then i'll read through that list quickly advanced therapy center for disability services early childhood education center charlton school circle of friends crossroads center for children new england center for children oak hill school parsons child programs and family resources spotted zebra learning center spring brook new york and st catherine center for children can i have a motion to approve the the agreements judy second gloria any questions or comments all in favor aye aye aye passes 9-0 next item is a resolution to approve the agreement with alarm expression incorporated to provide to provide fire alarm construction services part of the 30.9 million capital construction project can i have a motion to approve the service agreement rebecca second kelly any questions or comments you all in favor aye aye aye passes 9-0 and then finally this evening a
074resolution to approve service agreements to provide educational services to resident students and that would be for hillcrest academy learn well and south colonie central schools you can have a motion to approve these agreements barb second kelly any questions or comments all in favor aye passes 9-0 thank you neil next we move on to superintendent action dr wiles thank you i only have one item this uh this evening and that is a recommendation for the board to approve our project save plan this is our district-wide safety plan that was uh up for its first read at our last board meeting okay can i have a motion to approve the project save plan ben second judy any questions or comments about this you all in favor thank you dr wiles you're welcome next uh board president action
075um the first item is board of education goals listed here are the goals that we've talked about and then there's a working document attached to this and so i'll just read through the resolution the board of education goals resolve that the board of education adopt the specific measurable attainable relevant and timely or smart goals in the following areas close achievement slash opportunity gap focus on the support and focus on supporting the whole child focus on diversity and equity and facilities can i have a motion to approve the goals then second gloria any questions or comments okay all in favor aye aye passes nine zero next we have the establishment of the equity and diversity committee and it resolved that the board of education established an equity and diversity committee for the purpose of guiding the
076board of education to achieve for achievement of goals in this area these goals are also presented for adoption this evening the board will request letters of interest from school community stakeholders to be considered for membership on this committee can i have a motion to accept the establishment of this committee ben second kelly um any questions or comments seema did we decide how many people were going to be on this committee um i i don't think so i think we were going to uh first ask for letters of interest and see and if i if i remember correctly the communications committee said they could help in terms of um asking for letters putting that out there i'm looking at you gloria assuming that you're the chair it was a good assumption we did discuss it at
077our communications committee and we would be happy to get this off awesome okay any other questions or comments you all in favor all right i passes oh i'm sorry any nays and abstain i'm sorry barb i didn't see if you voted so you vote yay yes okay i'm sorry so pass is 9-0 just making sure uh next on the agenda the board committee reports we'll start with communications okay yes we met on september 30th we use that meeting as an opportunity to set some goals for ourselves as a committee and we'd like to just inform the whole board that we set four goals for ourselves uh one was to uh be a coveted communication to the community to kind of keep an eye on that getting word out to the community about protocols safety measures
078uh we've discussed the idea of having a safety tip of the week we're working on that idea second goal was to continue to finalize that handbook of board procedures the committee will review how well the guideline worked this year and uh maybe we would suggest that every spring the communications committee bring back to the whole board the idea of let's look at it okay let's move forward um we did uh i we did get some changes that i emailed all of you there were some minor changes and some some really good ones that ben suggested uh we're down to only two that i haven't finalized um so i i'd like to bring those to the communication committee in terms of just getting some language one of them was in to include public comment using remote
079uh learning or remote um option and uh the other one is i need to get ben to help me uh get the language straight um on one of the sections just the legal language but everything else is done we fig you know we have a reference for the open meeting law one so everything else seems fine and we'll get the final changes and then we'll give you a full copy of the of the three sections again the other three sections seem fine there were no suggested changes so it looks good uh so that was our second goal our third goal is to assist in the communication about board goals for example assist in the effort to publicize our new diversity and equity committee and call for participants so that was the one that you just
080asked that the committee would do and we'd like to you know kind of kick that off and get that going and our fourth goal uh is to work on the community engagement aspect as you have in the past uh for the budget development process so during that time period when we're looking to engage the community getting input um and getting information out the communications committee usually kind of uh headed that up and we'd like to continue doing that and we said in another meeting for october 14th awesome thank you gloria next um policy uh you have the fruits of our labor and we have another meeting coming up i think the 23rd whatever you say barbara i'm not sure wednesday i think at four okay thank you barb uh next business practices judy uh we
081haven't met yet we have a meeting scheduled for october 20th which may sound familiar because that's also our next board meeting our meeting will be at 4 on that day thank you judy and last audit ben um audit uh met on the 23rd uh in quote barbara you have the fruits of our labor we reviewed the audit with mike rossi from wesson company and the claims auditor reports which were both approved this evening our next meeting i believe is october 21st hey thank you ben next public comment number two linda did anybody email no okay and then last board issues ideas and sharing does anybody have anything to share i'll just i know kelly you emailed about putting that now we have a board of education at gildanschools.net email and so that email will go
082to everybody on the board and to dr wiles and so maybe we can put that up on the website i think that's a good idea and that will probably save emails people get asking about other people's emails i think they're all there but that just is makes it more efficient yeah i was just looking for it i couldn't like immediately find it so if i had to look through our emails to find it so um be nice if it was a little bit more central be like email the board click here it'd be great can we put that on the website yeah i actually um when i saw your email i forwarded it to amy so she could get it on there awesome fantastic any other um ideas sharing all right so can i have
083a motion to adjourn everybody kelly second ben all in favor aye aye passes nine zero thank you everybody good night