001great thank you thanks for being here everybody uh the board is exiting a executive session uh that we are in at six o'clock to discuss uh matters made confidential by ferpa and um so we we did already say our pledge of allegiance um so we can just continue on here um and we were all present at the executive session as well in this plot thank you okay so the next board of education meeting will be held on december 7th at 7 p.m right here in the uh small gym and um i will turn it over to dr benante to give us his update thank you just a few updates prior to our special presentation uh it's a fun time of the year where we get to see many of our student athletes prepare for their
002post-season competition and we had a great send-off last week last friday for our boys and girls cross country teams who are on their way to states respectively and that's an important haldane tradition whenever one of our teams our groups go off to states the kids send them off so luke what'd you think it was it was a soggy day but i think we made some good accommodations yeah i think despite the weather still indoors i think everyone was able to still come together and i think it was a good time yeah so it was high school focused usually we have the elementary students come out but it was uh amidst a downpour so we kept it just to the high school and and luki did quite well i again i made reference to it prior
003to the meeting but i did follow up with uh your results and the team's results it seemed like the the boys team finished eighth i don't think the girls team had enough runners to qualify as a team competition it was just uh individual results and if i saw correctly you were the top finisher for the boy runners or male runners that helmet that's correct congratulations luther great job thank you football had a tough loss uh to tuckahoe in the sectional final but for reasons that mr cowan can explain our football team still goes on to the state tournament i'll leave that to dan to cover i'm not quite clear on it myself but it was a great game 48 to 40. it was a long football game one of the longer football games i think
004i've ever been to just in terms of length of time but a great atmosphere a great number of fans from from haldane also from tuckahoe and a great season thus far by our boys football team and you always follow the teams that beat your team in the state tournament i just made note that the boys soccer team had a great sectional final game um against hamilton and hamilton ended up winning the state championship i noted last weekend so i think just goes to show how strong our boys team was just two other updates from me i just wanted to make reference in case you haven't seen them the lower hudson council of school superintendents released a statement last week which was picked up in the media regarding test to stay policy for coven which is
005something we've i've mentioned to the board before and also a mask metric or a series of metrics that could be utilized in making uh determinations at a school or a district level in in determining which restrictions to continue to impose or when the time would be appropriate to perhaps no longer require something like mass or further reduced distancing inside of schools which is all tied to now the fact that vaccinations are available for all school age children so that was actually i said it was a statement it was a letter to governor hulkel uh governor hochul has been quite responsive and has demonstrated develop a really effective rapport uh with various bodies that represent public education in new york state we'll see what comes of that but those are two items that i know we've
006discussed in the past and then also i just wanted to reference if you haven't reviewed it yet for our board that nisba and niskus as well as a couple other organizations had released a joint statement regarding equity diversity and inclusion that i just think is an important reference point as we've had discussions regarding such here at the board level and will continue to this school year so i just wanted to draw your attention to that in case you haven't had an opportunity to review it i think it'll be an important point of reference when we meet in retreat in january with that i would like to introduce mr mcgrawdy i think there he is mr mcgrardy is going to provide our first art update for haldane and this was at the request of the board
007in our planning earlier this school year and while dan gets set up i just wanted to give the board a sense of the parameters that i provided dan so he could have a good framework to work within so i asked dan to provide an overview just a broad overview on elements related to our arts program are specifically our visual and performing arts programs here at haldane i did ask dan as i ask all of our administrators when the report try to keep it to about 15 minutes with plenty of time for questions and answers and that's a lot or there's a lot that dan could potentially present so i know he had to really limit some things that uh he may have wanted to talk about but i always said that there's there's plenty of
008time in the future for follow-up conversations and uh discussion so uh there'll be time for questions and answers as well and with that uh mr mcgraw already welcome and thank you and i'm going to pull your presentation up on the screen you got it thank you first of all thank you to the board for inviting me this evening to present and thank you to our school administration for supporting the arts every day here at school so first just an overview of who we are so the arts department as we define it is the music and visual arts as well as the extracurricular drama program the staff consists of angela branco who teaches visual art for k through seven katie boonshoft who teaches visual art k3 8 through 12 as well as supervises our art club
009myself who serves as the arts coordinator i teach general music and digital music for k-8 as well as oversee the elementary school musical production william rich his first year at haldane teaches chorus grades four through twelve as well as high school studio production and jessica stein who teaches band for grades four through twelve as well as our jazz band in extracurricular areas we have christian hoolin who teaches our blues devils which is our school rock band jenna isabella who oversees our middle school drama production along with rebecca masbeck although this will be her first year doing that andrea mchugh who oversees the high school musical as well as high school drama and martha mekalackos who directs musical directs our musical directs our drama and directs our acapella blue notes group we have a relatively new
010department here at haldane bringing a lot of experience so what we offer at the elementary level so each elementary class will see music or art once a week at a fixed time when students are in fourth grade they have the option to join chorus or band or both chorus and band both meet before school course meets one day a week before school band meets two days a week before school as well as one pull-out lesson during the week after school extracurricular we have the elementary musical production which is about two to three times a week for a portion of the school year our last full production was the aristocats junior at the middle school level we have 6th grade 7th grade and 8th grade art which meets quarterly so in other words every day for
01110 weeks out of the school year general music for 6th grade is the same a quarterly class we have 6th grade concert band and 7th and 8th grade symphonic band which meet every other day as well as a pull out lesson during the week we have 6th grade chorus and 7th and 8th grade course which also meet on alternating days we also offer a digital music class for seventh and eighth grade all of these classes can be taken to fulfill the requirement to take a music and an art in seventh or eighth grade we also have a middle school production uh recent productions were circus olympus and the importance of being earnest at the high school visual art level we have studio art 1 and studio art 2 which are semester-long courses so if you
012take both you're essentially taking the course all year long same goes for drawing and painting and ceramics and sculpture we also have advanced art 1 and advanced art 2 and an independent study for our visual art for extracurricular we have an art club which is mainly student led and our dramatic performances such as the greek children from last year and the upcoming sense and sensibility tickets available now for high school music we have choir and symphonic band meeting during the day as well as a studio music production course in the extracurricular area we have our jazz band our blue notes which is a acapella group blues devils which is our rock band and the musical and the last full production was fiddler on the roof so a few highlights of our program like i said
013we have a relatively small department but that allows us to really have a team approach to things like aligning our curriculum and ensuring that we have a vertically aligned curriculum we're able to have those conversations we're also able to have those conversations with other departments such as having a recent example is having our participation rubric in the music department match and align with the pe participation rubric to provide that consistency with students so that's a really highlight of the small staff that we have that department approach also gives us some opportunities to discuss how to incorporate the haldane essentials in the strategic plan into our curriculum and it's been really helpful to have that team approach to such a you know hefty task we have a strong partnership with the haldane arts alliance we have
014really strong uh recruitment for band and choir at the elementary level we have a lot of enrollment we have digital music space which is great we offer a music in the parks trip at middle school which is quickly becoming a tradition and students are really excited to hopefully bring it back this year and we have a lot of enrollment in nisma all county and area allstate haldane of course also has a really strong reputation for its dramatic and musical productions for visual arts um student art is off is featured often at the garrison art center exhibits it's also featured at food town and that's for grades k through 12. we have 100 involvement of art students in the elementary and high school art shows they're also planning to have a first ever k-12 art show
015this year and the art shows are relatively new to haldane within the last couple years our visual arts teachers have really started that tradition we participate in the garrison arts center high school mental program we have an art club which as i said is mostly student-led and we have events such as the arts alive which really allow us to involve the great local artists that we have in the community and being able to use their expertise and give the students exposure to those those different arts it's a really great thing so these are some considerations to how our program is running and some of them rise to the level of recommendations for future uh effects on our programming the first being an auditorium here we are in gym which i had to cut play practice
016short today as well as the six basketball teams competing for space to practice so an auditorium is definitely a recommendation for improvement to our programming along with that i'd say is the storage that goes along with it such as our risers which are in the hallway such as our set pieces which have to be completely struck after each performance which could save time and money for our drama department we also don't have a designated coral space we currently use two rooms between the three teachers sometimes using this space as well competing with the pe during the school day so some upgrades to our existing auditorium would include painting our stage floor black as well as having access and safe access to our lighting fixtures both on the floor and on a stage as well as
017having a designee for maintenance to that technology up in the tech booth as well as the stage area and our shared mac lab which is currently being used by digital art but is or by digital music but is free to be used by the whole school and hopefully will be used by digital art soon i'd say it's in its mid-life as far as technology goes and currently does not have enough to accommodate the average class size at haldane so expanding it as well as having a plan for maintenance for that tech space so considerations for scheduling currently our three buildings all operate on three different schedules which impacts our programming since our entire department consists of what we call shared staff in other words we're all in teaching in two or three buildings or working
018on two or three schedules so it affects what we're able to offer and when so some of those changes to schedules that could allow changes in our programming could be offering elite ensembles during the school day as well as offering our elementary ensembles during the school day we could expand the number of electives that we offer such as theater art history photography piano music theory those last couple music offerings could be expanded with expanding our coral position from 0.8 to 1.0 fte and i will point out that art history has run in the past before through the history department and theater has run through the english department just not through the arts department we also have need in the area of tech support as i mentioned before for our tech booth and in general our
019performances have relied on the very generous volunteers and their expertise for our performances however relying on volunteers also creates a need when they're not available so it's something to consider for future programming that could have an effect on our drama performances we have a couple student perspectives to offer and i know that the sound is not uh very loud but we'll do our best hi i'm molly siegel i'm a senior and one of the things that i really enjoy about art class this year is just having a lot of freedom creatively with all the projects that were given and i feel like especially this year we've been given a lot more material to work with and like better quality stuff so it's made making things more enjoyable and i think just next year and like
020in the coming years just having more opportunities for like you know putting art around the school would be cool um you know there are a lot of cool murals kind of placed randomly but more of those would be nice i think hi i'm laurel cesano i'm a freshman and some things i enjoy about band is how much fun it is and how we get to just hang out and play music together and uh even with kovid we still get to play music and how this year we got the funding for the in playing masks so you can play indoors as well and so some other things i would like to see more in band would be like maybe some more people and different like opportunities like how in middle school there was the six flags
021trips to play that would be really cool to have more opportunities like that and some other things that's great thank you laurel hi my name is conrad white i am a junior at haldane high school and i'm part of the halloween drama club and i am in the high school choir one of the main things that i've always enjoyed about the um arts club and the drama department specifically is the amount of connection and community that goes along with the program that really connects students from any year it gives everybody an opportunity whether you're a freshman or a senior to shine when you're on stage whether or not you have a backstage part or if you're a lead role there's many different opportunities for you to work behind the scenes you can always be part
022of the stage crew there's a lot of opportunities to be stage manager the light and crew tech have been working alongside us alongside with us for years and years and even though they're still in the background it's a more prevalent part than most people would ever assume so we're really grateful to get those types of opportunities because even if you're not affiliated with the stage you can still work in whatever way you'd like the choir has always been a unique type of group to work with because there's a lot of differentiation between the music that you choose um it's almost always prevalent between every member of the choir because we're such a small but tightly knit group it makes it a lot easier for us all to work together and figure out what sound fits
023us all best so yeah in prevalent with both with both groups is just an enormous amount of community that makes it really easy to work together as a group and questions thank you so much not so fast no questions i hit it all yes me a little bit meg um the artist quarterly in middle school say that again art is quarterly so art is quarterly of middle school for sixth seventh and eighth grade yes and is music the same so um music for sixth grade is the same it's quarterly in seventh and eighth grade um they have the option to take band chorus or digital music which fulfills the requirement that requirement for art is fulfilled within the 7th grade and 8th grade art quarterly art class i don't have a question but i'd love
024to just take an opportunity to thank the arts department for all that they do thank you uh looking at you know the slide as you're listing all of the amazing things that the department is doing not just during the school day but outside of the school day it's really impressive and it's great to see it all in one spot like that i think it really speaks to the the gravity of how much the department contributes to the community and to the district um and i was also wanted to take the opportunity to share that i was really impressed by the arts department's work during the covid um um pandemic you know seeing you guys on the lawn uh teaching music and seeing miss branco coming in and out of the school with an art cart
025um every day not just when it was nice out not just because it was fun to go outside one day but literally every day um it was just very impressive and a testament to the department and its creativity to just keep making it work so thank you for all that you do and i think the comments that you made about scheduling are really um are current for us you know it's something that dr benante has talked about uh is is looking at scheduling um even doing like a scheduling audit to bring somebody in who's an expert in this field to just look at our scheduling and say how can we do this better because um you know if the schedule the crossing of different staff and going between different buildings it you know doesn't just
026affect the arts department it affects a lot of teachers and it's definitely something that dr bernante has brought up as a concern and i know the board is interested in looking at that area and seeing what we can do to to make improvements so i appreciate you bringing that up again um i think it's um it is something that we we know we need to look at and one more thing i'll say is just looking at how the arts department is constantly tasked with teaching so many different grade levels in one day it um is a huge effort and it's a huge undertaking um and i applaud you for the work that you do well thank you so much for your kind words and i'll pass it along to the rest of the department yeah
027i had one last question i'm sorry um could you give a brief really brief description on arts arts alive is that just fourth and fifth art arts alive is for fifth grade and i was um started i think we have corey here uh how many years ago more than five yeah seems like much more than that but um it's uh it's it's um so essentially it's a day for our fifth graders to interact with some local artists in the area and they're networked through the arts alliance and what used to be the arts booster club to find those artists and bring them in and essentially they do just an hour-long workshop sometimes hours sometimes 45 minutes depending on what it is and the students get to choose what workshop they want to do based on
028their interests and i mean we've had a huge variety of things we've had obviously dance and drumming and singing and songwriting we've also had bonsai gardening we've had cooking we've had art therapy we've had yoga i mean just the list goes on and on just all from local community community members volunteering their time because we do live in a really arts rich area so it's it's just for fifth grade currently um for a while we haven't been able to do this because of covid we did have the afternoon session was our high schoolers actually performing here in the auditorium for our elementary students a variety of towns almost like a talent show but then with a little q a opportunity for the students to ask you know how they got interested how they learned their
029craft and it's just all in all really great experience they get t-shirts for the event through the student council it's uh it's a lot of fun thanks so it's usually in spring of fifth grade so it's like a nice end to the end to elementary school event quick question first thank you and i'll say a little bit more but second on on do you have any sense of how many students participate in high school sort of elective performances things outside of classes because my overwhelming opinion when i started first started being introduced to the holiday district was that it's an incredible number of people who participate in sports there's incredible number of people who participate in the arts in some way and i just i have a sense that the entire community comes together to
030do that but i was wondering whether off the top of your head you had some sort of idea um i don't have an exact number the cast sizes definitely change depending on um you know the show that they're doing um so i don't have a sense of in terms of like percentages of how many students are participating but it does seem you know for a small school like it's a really high number i will also say along with that a lot of students do you know more than one thing here at haldane that's one of the great things about a small school but it's also something that stretches our students a little thin at times but yeah there's high i'd say very high level of participation and it's it's nice to see that students are
031doing so many different things i know i went to a big school and it was kind of like everyone chose their avenue but here at haldane we really have a a culture where you can do sports and you can do the play and that's that's encouraged that's a great thing um but i don't have exact numbers off the top of my head i can get them to you if you want no that's okay but the the last thing i'd say is like that part of participating in the community i think is super super important super valuable especially you can dip in and out of things in a very easy way that you i went like similarly went to a very large high school you picked your lane and there was no getting out of it
032for better for worse but i would say that um not only are we fortunate that the community of students participates but that the community in general and corey is here so i will give her a direct shout out but all of the people who support the howling arts boosters and now the howling arts alliance both through their activities you see the list on every single program of everybody who has participated and i know certainly ms sniffin has painted some sets and probably everybody else in the room has done likewise outside of there so it's a great i appreciate it every single time we see it so thank you thank you thank you thank you and yes big shout out to corey our former uh arts alliance president okay any more questions for mr mcgordy thank
033you so much for being here thank you thank you thank you so much good to see you so we're going into our communication from the public we'll just take a moment to note since it's a uh a new process for us that our first public comment section is for comments that surround the special presentation uh for example if anyone wanted to comment on the arts update or agenda items so anything that is you know on our docket that we're about to talk about now would be the time to communicate okay oh corey did you want to it is it is public comment if you would like to comment on the arts update or on something on our agenda very good state your name please for the record corey reester um i just wanted to support
034everything that dan so eloquently expressed especially his recommendations to the board sounds like all of you are aware of much of that and i just want to add too for the arts department as a whole staff retention and adding that point whatever it is and and kind of having that continuity is incredibly important for the program that we have and also making sure that some of those volunteer positions are either made into permanent positions or that you guarantee that you have volunteers with the technical abilities i'm looking at the booth up there um that have the skills to be able to do it because otherwise it it's just not going to happen so um thank you all i'm thrilled that there was an arts presentation here and um good night thank you okay we're going
035into our information reports so uh first up i will invite uh luke perella to share his report with us tickets are currently on sale on my school box so the and the show times are uh december 3rd 4th and 5th so that weekend is when it's going to be taking place um additionally this week is college week so we're seeing many reps are coming through to to visit throughout the week including dcc reps and mount st mary which are actually doing instant decision so i'll figure out uh obviously that instantly and as of now we've had a 139 early action early decision applications have been submitted by the seniors and then now we're continuing to uh work on the the regular decision the following deadline so it's a good move and then um just the
036student council has been organizing for thanksgiving and upcoming k-12 food drive and every grade level has a different item that they're focusing on bring in and then that's going to be ending by 11 or november 22nd so we're working on that so that's what i got thank you thank you very much jennifer it's okay i did uh want to ask after uh luke's presentation if tim could actually go next just because tim had some slides he wanted to pull up in relation to an item that may be forthcoming for the board so i don't if it's okay with you um we'll go slightly out of border just by having tim go before uh christine sure all right mr walsh keeping us on our toes some highlights from this previous month from the maintenance department we
037often talk about a lot of the things that we accomplished throughout the month but i'd like to talk quickly about some of the training that took place this past month um and it was building upon the the mandated training that mr elder put out at the beginning of the year uh we built upon that calendar for the maintenance personnel we published a training calendar for all personnel we added about 15 additional trainings for them to take throughout the course of the year it's through the gcn training platform it's about two per month that we asked the job specific training it includes state mandated training osha training such as hazardous communications hearing protection program as well as just general good practice training like fire extinguisher use professionalism effective communication so we're going to keep that calendar
038in place people have been receptive to it and we'll do this on an annual basis throughout the course you know as we progress we'll just republish the calendar in upcoming years in addition uh during superintendent's conference day we also had a vendor come on site and teach cpr and aed training to our cleaner and cleaner drivers we have 12 members of the staff now certified in cpr and aed usage and these are members that are both day shift and night shift they're stationed throughout buildings they work lunches they drive buses they work extracurricular events so having these members cpr and aed certified is certainly a an added benefit uh to the school district so transitioning slightly i like like to talk about up here on the board is our current operations and maintenance organizational structure
039this is how it currently stands and if you notice in the upper left highlighted is a building maintenance mechanic exterior this position is currently the incumbent is anthony stronconi tony will be retiring here in the next couple couple weeks and providing that he's retiring gives us the opportunity to look at this position see if it still uh benefits the district and as we're reviewing here you'll notice that it's now highlighted in green this is the proposed organizational structure for january of 2022. when we look at the two positions both head groundskeeper which is proposed as well as a building maintenance mechanic if you compare these positions they're both similar in qualifications in terms of years of experience in terms of supervisory experience required the primary difference between the two is the job duties that are
040required of the position feel that the head groundskeeper job description and job duties more aptly fit what is required of the position and what we be looking to have accomplished here on campus so we're proposing that that change takes place here within our department and that's all that i have unless there's any other questions um and there's just to clarify so you said that the uh the change is is is a change in jobs description it's not a change necessarily in salary requirements or is it the only set there has to be a new salary schedule developed simply because there is not one currently in the csca contract for the head groundskeeper it would be similar to building maintenance mechanic and the only difference is that we have like positions some that are required of
041a cdl some that are not required of a cdl so that would be the only difference is if there's a cdl requirement for it or not very good thank you any questions for mr walsh okay thank you very much okay miss jamin good evening you have a number of items from the elementary school on the memo but the few i wanted to highlight was first last year in the spring our fifth graders had done a lot of research on what it required to become a certified wildlife habitat and i don't think that the certification arrived before the end of the school year but our space was certified to be a wildlife habitat based on the additions that they put in the space that's outside of the art room if you head right out those doors
042so enough habitat for wildlife enough sources of water food shelter and such this fall our fifth grade new fifth graders have been researching the different spheres of the earth and are going to be adding their informational boards they just arrived from grey's printing so mr walsh's team has lots of things on their agenda but he and i will meet and find a way to hang them and what is the best way to have them in the space adding information to what is there for the animals for those who use the space to look at and learn from so that's an exciting way that what started as one project is expanding and hopefully more years to come we'll continue to use it and expand on it and make it make it their own as time goes
043on i want to update you on two of our long-term building goals the first is our math curriculum which we've been looking at and have started the process so we've moved into a phase where over the summer mr josh and i had looked at um what curriculums were being used locally and what curriculums were highly rated on what works clearinghouse and ed reports and had narrowed it down to a selection of eight or nine curriculums that seemed to meet our overall need we had a group of teachers that volunteered to meet with us on superintendent's conference day and spend some time digging into their websites some of them we have some sample materials of but looking at what is out there and how it relates to the criteria that were established by our instructional team
044over the course of last spring so looking at what we have currently what the teachers see as the strengths where they've seen that they have to consistently supplement the curriculum and build things in that aren't part of the resources that we have and so identifying those strengths and weaknesses led to the criteria that we're looking at what else is out there so at this point we've narrowed it down to really three that seem to come out strong that we're going to get more materials for and look at those three are big ideas in vision and bridges and we're moving into the next step of exploring those further and getting more information from from their materials to compare them to the criteria that we've set the other was started prior to my coming here the elementary
045school had started looking at the report cards and whether they met the building's needs both from the teachers and from the parents a survey had gone out to parents about report cards to gather their input teachers had been looking at how they worked for them in their assessments since the last report card revision the next generation science standards have come out we've adopted new curricular resources that may approach the curriculum in different orders so right now our teachers are looking at what the categories on the current report cards are comparing it to the standards and the orders that they're approaching the material for the course of the year and proposing whether some of them should stay the same whether some should be removed whether any should be added and then in january we're going to
046be having articulation meetings to make sure there's common threads if the kindergartners narrowed it down to this does that align with what the first graders are also highlighting not that they would be exactly the same but they should flow into each other and those important concepts should cut across so those are two big initiatives that are taking a lot of time and work and our teachers are doing quite a bit to just reflect on on both our math curriculum and how we assess students and report it to families so thank you for all their work yes so can you restate the names of the three math curricula that you are sure so big ideas which is the one that was recently adopted for the middle school so that one um obviously the idea that there's
047then a good articulation between uh puts that one on our high in our consideration envision e-n-v-i s-i-o-n um and bridges envision isn't the new so envision is a little tricky there's a couple of programs under them that uh have different names so envision is the one that it references but there's a few different resources thank you thanks thank you very much okay dr silke good evening everyone um always happy to be here and have some of my most grateful moments when i'm up here at the podium and when i'm also listening to my colleagues highlight what is going on at haldane and just to add on to what dan was sharing earlier uh impromp being prompted by jessica stein our band teacher i'm in touch with alice and emmick the principal over at garrison and
048we're imagining a time after covid where the garrison band and the housing band might actually get to play together so that's really something to look forward to um also you know hearing christine talk about faculty having the time to really dive deeply into curriculum having my faculty work together today during a faculty meeting on looking at the curriculum overview i was so happy to hear dan say that the pe and the fine arts department are looking at a aligned uh participation rubric i mean the you know that's the type of work that comes out of um giving educators the time and space to dive into their you know deep thinking about their respective curricula so excited about that and october was a really fun and busy month we wrapped up the literacy fair with the
049hard work of the pta and our author visit we the sixth grade team had a great team building trip to uh and wellness building trip to the taconic outdoor education center and um heidi gessen's seventh grade dci section created the first edition of the haldane scoop which is going to be a middle school quarterly news letter so lots going on there we celebrated red ribbon week which is an annual celebration to increase awareness on the dangers of substance abuse and the middle school also is drawing to a close on our fall into teamwork theme which is a part of our model school model howdy middle school is true blue so we're going to be moving into a blizzard of responsibility hopefully not also a blizzard in the weather for the next quarter thank you you
050just gave tim a heart attack he was like a blizzard no not yet um thank you and and dan thank you great great job um just a few things from my board reflection to to highlight for you um one of the things i'd like to talk about is volunteerism in the community um we dan and i had a meeting earlier in the year with the local local fire and emt organizations and nick falcone from the emt group here phillipstown ambulance corps had reached out in regards to trying to build and educate students on the importance one of volunteerism but the possibility of being an emt and through that connection and discussion we sent out a survey to the entire community about three weeks ago looking to see if not only students but any community members
051were interested in taking the coursework to become a certified emt dutchess community college along with phillipstown emergency services are looking to offer that course here so there's still a little bit of time if if people are interested and nick will be following up with any interested community members in in taking that course in addition to that another community partnership very important to the high school is the putnam county youth bureau and every year the putnam county youth bureau send over certified social workers to work with our high school students on becoming mentors and we have a mentor program that scott manney and renee curry run with fifth grade students so that mentorship and mentor program is up and running in addition to that dr silke and i took some time this year to meet potentially
052because that program has parameters where it's for fifth grade students and elementary only um we we saw a need at expanding that into the middle school so some of our students who were trained through putnam county or in addition to other students interested in mentor program we are aligning with students in the the middle school so that's been a great addition for us um you can see there some of the curriculum work that took place on superintendent's conference day and i just want to thank josh um for his partnership and work work together in that it's nice to have a curriculum person to process and plan that work together so thank you for that that josh and i'm sure he's going to highlight a little bit more on that but finally my last thing is
053it's that time of year where we fill out the paperwork for seal of biliteracy and last year with kovid so many one that was one of the things that just kind of got away from us um so the deadline with new york state was december 1st so i just need to thank barbara jennings and nina ortiz we filled out the application for the seal of bi-literacy work and we sent it up to new york state today so hopefully we'll be looking at some of our seniors this year receiving the seal of by literacy upon graduation so thank you thank you miss sniffman ms rounds okay good evening um so i wanted to share with the board tonight a lot of what is going on in the pps department is a a good amount of sharing
054information and resources in many different areas and and i'm excited to talk about that this month we had myself and mrs grenant attended a workshop on dyslexia and that resulted in us being able to come back and turnkey a lot of the information that we learned with the staff ms gernant has been working giving a series of workshops on early literacy and strategies and working with struggling readers and giving a lot of information to our teachers that can be used right in the classroom right away in terms of interventions peggy shared a resource with me that i was able to look at and again quick targeted interventions free so i was able to share that with our literacy specialist as well as jen to say look this over as part of the research that we're
055doing um and this is all part of our department goal to explore programs and strategies for struggling readers uh we're in the process of collecting all of this information and then sharing the information that we find valuable along those same lines of uh bringing information back to the rest of our colleagues our counselors have been working for the last few years with a dbt consultant dialectical behavior therapy consultant who works with them monthly to keep the their their development going in in this area and they were able to coordinate an after-school staff development where she will be providing two staff quick coaching of students in distress so this is just a quick intervention that teachers can use if a student is in distress to get them back to class to have it have a little
056as little impact on the school day as possible until an appointment can be made for a longer session with one of the counselors so that'll be offered at the end of this month in addition not in my board report today we got to meet with the secondary special ed department and i've had a team there's been a team of us within the department attending transition workshops for post-secondary and best practices in in what we should be implementing for students as they transition out of high school into the world of work or college and we were able to share a lot of information today with the rest of the special education faculty at the high school level in terms of best practices so as i said i'm just pleased to see all of our faculty and
057staff sharing information amongst each other collecting resources sharing those research resources and having rich discussion around the work that they're doing and just finally this friday our learning differences committee will be having the first meeting i expect it to be a small meeting teresa lagerman is the contact person but it is in person so i think that there there's a limited number of um individuals that will be able to attend at the butterfield library but it will be an opportunity for our faculty and our parents a few of our parents to get together and discuss areas related to special education and learning differences thank you thanks so much mr elders good evening everybody um i did want to just talk a little bit about our superintendent's conference day which took place on november 2nd and
058uh rather than just kind of talk about the the what took place i just want to talk a little bit about the how and how that day was organized and came to be um in the teaching profession there's a reflective process that's very well known which is called the plan teach reflect and apply process and simply as you plan your lessons you teach those lessons in front of your class you spend time thinking about what worked what did not work that's the reflection and you apply those reflections and then you plan and then you teach and you apply and you just the cycle keeps going and going um and as ms sniffen had uh uh alluded to a little bit earlier i think that the superintendent's conference day not only on november 2nd but at
059the beginning of august 31st and september 1st was really the implementation of that model at a much broader level particularly talking about adult learning and really the success of this day i feel like is founded on the work that preceded me being here you know that took place over the strategic coherence planning and then obviously the work that was done last year uh by my colleagues when school was uh you know and very disrupted but kept the work moving forward and so after our superintendent's conference days at the beginning of the year we went through this reflective process not only as an administrative group but also talking with teacher leaders and talking and using areas like the held in curriculum council to kind of offer what those reflections are and thinking about how we might
060plan the november 2nd conference day and so i think when we looked at the schedule of what we put out it was very reflective of that process right we had a morning session which was facilitated really as a common k-12 focus of everyone in the district kind of focusing on the same thing which is the curriculum articulation process and then the afternoon really resulted in buildings being able to to offer really targeted ways that they continued some of that work but also really worked on some very strategic work they were doing in their own individual buildings and so i wanted to highlight that a little bit because even after the september excuse me the november second day we continued this reflective process you know the administration got together and we talked about what we felt
061went well and what did not work well or what we need to continue to do we've engaged some teachers in those conversations and then at our last haldane curriculum council meeting which is made up of department head and teacher leaders within the district we spent a significant amount of that time reflecting on that process also of that day and thinking about what the next next steps are and so i highlight this process or this thinking pattern of how we operate because i think when you have this collaborative reflective process it creates shared ownership of success within the district and also results in some very meaningful targeted professional development and really maximizing what those days are for great thank you thank you mr cowan good evening dr bernante members of the board it's good to see
062you folks this evening um tonight i'd like to uh in a moment i'd like to mention the fall athletes who earned all league and all section honors but before i do i'd like to say congratulations to all of our fall sports teams our athletes did a tremendous job this year the time that they give to their sports the effort our student athletes demonstrated great character great sportsmanship and i'm very proud of all of our fall athletes but i would like to get into some of the specific players from our teams that were awarded all league in all sections starting with girls soccer our girls soccer team finished as section 1 class c finalists and there are four players who were voted by other coaches in the league to be all league and that is madison
063chiera bianca her manchin ruby poses and chloe rowe so excellent job um to those girls soccer players our girls tennis team had a great season this year and have three uh players from their team that were nominated and and selected to be all league and that's myrid o'hara ellen o'hara and betsy mcbride our girls volleyball team competed in the section one tournament and the coaches in in our league um voted for megan tomen to be all league for volleyball both our boys and girls cross country teams won the section one championship for cross country and both teams competed in the state championships this past saturday in binghamton as dr bernanke mentioned earlier many of the the runners from both the boys and girls team achieved their personal uh records in binghamton which was excellent the
064uh boys runners for all league is luke perella john kislinger and the honorable mention was conrad white and from our girls team all league eloise pearsall celia drury helen nichols and the honorable mentions were andrea vasconcellos and kira shanahan our boys soccer team were also section one class c finalists we have a few players that were um who earned all league ryan n wong matt silhavi max westfall we have an all section honorable mention ronan kaider he also won all league and we have all section william sniffen who also was named the league dmv mvp and had also um earned all league honors and our coach for the boys team coach ahmed duidar was voted as coach of the year for league d boys soccer our football team is still alive and and the football
065coaches meeting is actually tomorrow night to choose our football players that would be all league in all section we play up in plattsburgh this friday which will be very exciting and really i would just like to say congratulations to all the fall teams again and thank our parents and community uh for all the support that you gave us this fall thank you congratulations okay we're going into consent agenda minutes may i have a motion please these are minutes from the november 2nd meeting any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed okay consent agenda financial may i have a motion please any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed consent agenda personnel may have a motion please any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed okay we're going into new business and
066before we uh go through the items i'd like to make a motion to strike number three from the agenda may i have a second please second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed okay so going to item number one the cse cpsc recommendations miss plot that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the board of education hereby approves the recommendations of the committees on special education and preschool special education as presented may i have a motion please any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed okay the uh information technology audit corrective action plan ms platt be it resolve that upon the recommendation of the superintendent the board of education hereby accepts the ossc information technology audit and approves the corrective action plan may have a motion please any discussion do
067you want to make any comments if i uh john thank you i just wanted to know uh as the board's uh aware as you've received this information uh prior there were two key findings from the comptroller's office report or i'm sorry audit of our information technology systems uh one related to uh unneeded network user accounts uh being still enabled uh and the second uh also was related to user accounts and and administrative permissions that were still enabled so these were recommendations or findings that were very technical in nature so they're they're easy to to fix that being said over the last two three months our team has really sat with these findings and recommendations as well as and using them as an opportunity to review all of our processes and procedures related to information uh
068technology and in particular information security uh in our district which is something as you've likely read has begun to impact many districts uh in our area so um we're appreciative of any opportunity that we have for an independent audit of our systems and processes we've expressed as such to the comptroller's office and you'll see attached to the corrective action plan the what we're doing to fix these uh problems but i think more importantly we're using this as an opportunity really to examine all of our processes and procedures even though that didn't fall under the scope of the comptroller's audit and lastly i'll just apologize if i was distracted before i didn't see the attachments on the agenda so i was communicating with one of our district staff just to make sure that they were there
069they were in executive content i'm in the public view so i apologize before i was on my phone uh just making sure that they were there i see the um the corrective action plan and public content yes they were moved oh okay okay real-time moving objections um okay any further discussion all those in favor aye any opposed okay so we're going to item number four this is the superintendent's evaluation uh peggy mentioned it as something we would be discussing this meeting um and so i turn it to peggy to just talk us through our next steps yeah so i haven't written up the document that i've written up in the past but i will revise that and share it with everybody but it's going to say exactly what i'm saying now which is the plan
070is for the board to meet an executive session before our next meeting which is on december 7th i actually found out just the other day that i won't be traveling for work in december so i'll be here in person so we'll meet afterwards and the plan is just to come when i share the dates via an email i'll also just re-share the super value superintendent's evaluation document so that you have it but really the purpose of this mid-year informal evaluation process is typically what we do is just identify what kinds of questions we might have for dr banante particularly in terms of the district goals and anything else share those with him in advance and then meet for uh after our december 17th before after our december december 17th meeting um to have a conversation
071about those um that's what we've done in the past and i think that'll serve for this year um and that's really it so uh the board will await a an email from you but we're looking at executive sessions on the 14th and the 21st on this i'm sorry the 7th the 20th and on the 21st on the 7th and 20th on the 21st and time to be determined did you want to determine that i mean i don't know we can go ahead and do it now i mean i think it's everyone can do at this point it used to be that doing executive sessions before the meeting was difficult i'm actually trying to while we have people who are working oh you know what so what it is this is how it's going to have
072to work so on the sev it's on the 7th we could do it beforehand if that works for everybody on the 21st it will have to be after the meeting because jen phil and i are having a policy committee meeting before the board meeting so i just want to make sure that exec session before the meeting on the 7th works for everybody 6 p.m 6 p.m 6 pm 7 p.s yep good for you maggie yep we could all we could we could we could also do it afterwards i mean it could be easier it might be better just to do it after the meeting because we don't know if we need a whole hour shall we just do it after the meeting on the seventh yeah all right and it will also it will definitely
073be after the meeting on the 21st because phil jenn and i are meeting as a policy committee before the meeting on the 21st okay so post meeting execs on the 7th and the 21st to discuss the evaluation or is there a problem with the 21st i'm likely to be out of town on the 21st so we may need to do we want to do this at the first meeting in december then i mean january the the in the meeting with dr bernante in january yeah in january first meeting in january sure does that work for you huh yeah that's fine okay all right great i didn't realize that sorry oh that's okay new news no no this works that works good so now we i don't have like jen phil and i don't have a
074four hour meeting on the 21st no complaints no complaints there okay very good and peggy will include that include that those dates and times in your email if you don't mind yeah yes thank you i think i didn't hear you but so to write them out and send it like an email just yes so much and make sure now i won't have to revise it because i will know what to put in it correctly the first time um okay so moving on to the budget calendar this is a draft um this isn't something we are approving at this meeting this is just uh here for our review is there anything different than usual phil that you'd like to point out or is it pretty standard i believe it's pretty standard okay i think anna would
075agree and okay looking forward to our budget beginning uh okay so going into communication from the public as a note this is our now our catch-all communication so anybody can say anything to us about district matters um is there any communication from the public okay going into board committee oh come on please for the record corey wiester again um since i'm here um i just wanted to let the board know that i've watched quite a few of your um board meetings on video it's a lot easier that way and i just wanted to speak very briefly to equity diversity and inclusion i'm gratified to know that a lot of these discussions are happening now but i'm also not gratified that i feel like i've been a broken record for years at this podium before the
076board when it comes to students with disabilities and i simply urge the board to look very closely at edi and look at where it is at how thing diversity exists where we are failing our students in terms of equity and what exactly that term inclusion truly means to the board there have been lots of things bandied about over the years and we know for a fact that not all students are here in the building being educated howling still sends a lot of students out of district what does inclusion truly mean to this school district and i would add i know there's federal funds coming right exciting think about that in that context you know think about it as you do your internal reviews and reports and just think deeply about what this means and now
077i'll stop talking thank you all so much thank you thank you corey any other communication from the public okay very good going to the board committee reports the policy committee update we actually have an update yeah to share updates so we didn't have an update and i actually have something i want to bring up based on what i read in the most recent onboard that phil jenn and i haven't had a chance to discuss but i think it's appropriate for me to bring it up here so i think if you took a look at our minutes you can definitely see what we accomplished at our first meeting we have decided to commit to six meetings a year those meetings will be i think an hour and a half each we've set up a schedule for
078how how many pages of the manual we want to read for each meeting reading that number of pages is in addition to doing the ongoing review of the policy updates that we get from erie boces erie one boces um so i mean i think if you read the minutes that's all there so i kind of that was just a little bit of a recap what's not in there and what i want us to think about and we can talk about it again the next time we have one of these policy updates is um if you read the most recent onboard uh i think it was the most recent onboard there was actually an article about policies and how policies are an opportunity to encourage um community engagement and it made me think about a couple
079of things so if if the if as the policy committee we are doing this ongoing policy review i guess one of the things we decided uh as a policy committee is that rather than have erie boces update our policy manual every single time we review a new policy we would wait and have them do it once a year when they do our annual policy manual update the exception would be any policies that have a deadline by which they need to be implemented so we'll be engaged in this ongoing process of reviewing recommendations from erie one of reviewing the existing policies in the manual but our plan is not to send it back to erie to update the policy manual except for once a year during that annual manual audit so then the question when i
080was reading this article came to me well like so then what's the best way to involve the board in these especially when we're reviewing the policies that erie boces sends us and so what i'd like to suggest is that even though we're going to have erie one officially update the policy manual only once a year during this annual manual audit that as the committee reviews and makes decisions about policies we go ahead and bring them to the board for first read which would mean that we're actually sort of reviewing them also as a board over the course of the year that would also allow instead of us dumping 20 policies on the board just once a year it would also would give the board the opportunity to read them more thoroughly reflect on them more
081thoroughly and it would also give us the opportunity in having these initial readings to present them to the community um one at a time and i mean i think if you look at the some of the policies that we even want to talk about it won't be ready right away but there's a policy on smoking and cannabis use that you know i think the you know the the the community may want to weigh in on i don't expect that we're going to have a draft of our diversity equity and inclusion policy for a while but once that is ready that's certainly going to be an important policy for us to bring in front of the community so that's that's my thinking so i think that sounds good that sounds great i think so i think
082so too because we were sort of talking about how to do it we were and in the committee meeting we were like oh we'll just bring it at once but i really think that that um that article gave me an opportunity to reflect and think a little bit about the process so i think what we'll probably want to do is just articulate that in our next meeting so that it gets reflected in the minutes as well and i hope i didn't spring that on you unnecessarily but i think didn't think it was going to be like super super controversial no i think that sounds good what do you think is it good yeah so um yeah i mean again by reading these policies as we sort of consider them i think it will provide opportunities
083for folks to weigh in um and be engaged to the extent that they want to great so stay tuned you'll be getting some policies and some first readings coming your way um okay uh westchester putnam school boards association update i will share two things um do you guys all get the new york state council the superintendents school superintendents did i say that right niscus their advocacy updates do you guys all get those yes so westchester putt looks at those and uses them as like um inspiration for advocacy and the recent one that was sent out was all about teacher certifications and finding these multiple pathways for teacher certifications for people who are joining teaching as a second career people who are going back into teaching people are switching certification areas uh trying to advocate for
084making that just all a little bit more possible so westchester putt is trying to work with um this guess to create like a joint advocacy um platform so that's something that they're working on and um you guys all get those town call um recaps that i send you so i'll just invite any of you i know i on occasion try to tell somebody to go but there are like terrible times like tuesday at 12 which i can never go to but if anybody ever wants to attend one of those calls on haldane's behalf you know it does not have to be the board president it can be anybody so if anybody's interested you have that time free if you want to just register yourself you can or if you want to touch base with me
085and i can show you how to do it if you're not sure so that housing can be represented on those calls i think that would be great um you know they just happen monthly so it's not that big of a commitment so that is all i have to say about that um are there any board reflections to share no okay dr bernante do you have any final thoughts no final thoughts thank you jen okay well then i'll make a motion to adjourn may i have a second please all those in favor aye any opposed i dare one of you to ever oppose that uh great thank you very much [Music] you