001call this meeting to order i believe that's what i'm supposed to say so please stand for the republic for pledge it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice president daly president daley vice president mcdonald here trustee clements here trustee headland here trustee valentine here thank you so much miss platt as you can see uh president daley is not with us here in person um i'm here in her stead um as of yet we don't need to tell you where she is but in the future it's my understanding that we will have to tell you her location be it for now she looks very nice from where i'm looking at this point um our next board meeting is on november 2nd 2021 at 7 pm right here in the gym um i think
002that's all i have to say dr benante over to you thank you sean welcome to the members of the community as well as the members of the board who are with us this evening i did want to start just by welcoming luke perella who'll be our student advisor to the board of education as i mentioned during our last meeting luke will be joining us for our workshop meetings and luke we really look forward to your participation in our meetings and we'll hear a little bit more from you in a few minutes so thanks for being here tonight uh just a few announcements for me before we transition to a couple of special acknowledgements first you may have read or you will be reading in the news shortly governor hulkel announced this afternoon that the new
003york state that new york state has reached an agreement in an important case which was new yorkers for students educational rights versus new york state which will establish that new york state will fully fund the current foundation aid formula which is something we usually talk about come february or march or so this will likely result in about six hundred and ninety thousand dollars in additional funding for halden over a three-year period of time uh so that's good news for us and we'll have more to share about what those dollars will go towards come budget time so uh it's a three-year process or a three-year phase-in which there were signs that this would uh occur during last year's budget process but good news nonetheless this secures uh that the foundation aid will be funded in its
004entirety uh by the end of a three-year period so last week i alan berry who was uh consultant who we hired completed the on-site portion of his audit of our human resources related practices and procedures uh the audit is uh being completed as a means of gaining an objective perspective from alan's group on our processes given the transitions that have occurred in the human resource offices the on-site portion included meetings with all members of our administration support personnel and also the leadership of each of our labor associations and the full audit will be complete by the end of december and i look forward to sharing the results of that with the board when the time comes and thanks to alan for facilitating that last week and lastly you may have recognized or identified the umbrellas
005at your seats this is school boards recognition week and i wanted to take a moment on behalf of our school community to express my appreciation for your service to halden its students our faculty and staff the past year has continued to demonstrate that public education is a very complicated landscape and dare i say there's been a bit of a storm if you will in public education with covid and some other factors that have really influenced the public dialogue as it relates to our schools yet our board's steady and supportive leadership has helped us to keep our kids in school and our community focused on our long-term goals for students so you'll see the tag on the umbrellas are we couldn't have weathered the storm without you again a small sign of our appreciation and thank
006you to catherine and megan shields in my office for helping facilitating these small gifts as a token of our appreciation and i ask our community just join us in a round of applause for our school board and transitioning just to some more good news i'll ask that mrs sniffen come to the podium we have a few students we'd like to recognize this evening as our special guest good evening everyone i guess has become somewhat tradition at this time of year we get to recognize our students that are commended or national merit scholars this year we have three students that are receiving the commended national merit scholarship awards and recognition this award is granted to juniors based upon their psat scores and students who score in the top 3 percent in the nation out of 1.6
007million students so just the top three percent will receive this award so this year again we have three uh owen carmesino was the first he could not be here tonight but again as is tradition beyond just test scores i think it's very important we also recognize something else about our students and our learners so owen is a member of our varsity soccer team here at helding owen is also a full-time boces student where he attends the honors engineering program at putnam northern westchester boces so owen couldn't be here this evening but if we could give owen a round of applause next we have marcel schwartz who is here this evening with his father marcel again a student who is a student beyond just the classroom and the psat score marcel this year stepped up last
008minute to really ensure that the howling drama production went on and filled the shoes of being a stage manager pseudo stage manager uh this past spring so we're grateful for marcel and to have him here as a held in student marcel come on up [Applause] and finally matt mccoy i think everybody here knows matt mccoy in one way shape or form uh matt in addition to receiving the commended national merit scholar award uh is responsible for sound for probably 95 percent of things that take place here on holding campus that includes the drama performances the musicals any concerts we have if we have assemblies the blues devils rehearsals on thursday nights matt is responsible for sound he can jump in and run the light board he can basically do anything related to technology here at
009haldane so matt congratulations on both this award and all that you do for helding and congratulations to their families as well we're going to take a picture outside i think they're heading out for a photograph now yes great as a member of the theatrical community it's so great to hear so much drama representation in these three people so now next on to our workshop topic uh curriculum and human resources update yes so uh mr elder i'll come to the podium and he'll provide an overview on some early year curriculum in human resource matters we anticipate that josh will be reporting to the board quite frequently throughout the year so this is just a preliminary update on where we stand on some matters related to curriculum as well as human resources thanks josh i'll turn it
010over to you great thank you so much good evening to my colleagues dr benate the board of education and the heldain learning community i appreciate the opportunity to give you as dr bernante said a quick overview of some initiatives and things we've been working on in the office of curriculum instruction as well as in human resources i believe everyone has a copy of the slides in front of you yes great so the first thing i would say in terms of curriculum is that you know curriculum is derived from a couple of resources it can come from national standards and of course as curriculum and education is serviced by state and local governments and state standards also provide so you have national standards and you have state standards but as the quote shows on the screen
011says you know a high quality curriculum reflects the values priorities of the district schools teachers and students that it serves the real work of any school district of any local school district is how it translates these standards from both national and state state organizations that reflect upon the values and priorities that school districts have and this is one of the reasons why if you go to new york state and travel into any elementaries middle school or high school you will see similar subjects being taught in very very different ways and presented in very very different ways so curriculum is really the planning stages of how we take that information and then we utilize it into more of a localized situation and again we translate that into what any local district kind of prioritizes in heldain
012right haldane has gone through a process over the last few years to reach the situation where it is clearly articulated um the values and priorities of the district via the haldane essentials um so over three years ago resulted out of this strategic coherence plan the community came to the realization that these would be the six essentials that make heldain unique and that are specific to haldane and that are valued within the community from parents students teachers and faculty and staff and administrators so where we sit now is this really unique opportunity to think about how in haldane we take these six articulated values against these state and local standards and start thinking about our own curriculum and where these manifest themselves within a k-12 process and very much so in situations like writing where we
013take a look at what does writing look like in kindergarten in first grade and second grade and third grade the haldane essentials provide a very unique opportunity to take a look at these values such as critical thinking and what does that look like in first grade second grade third grade fourth grade and how these values spiral themselves throughout the curriculum with really the emphasis being as you think of a student progressing through their school career from a kindergartner to 12th grade that they are consistently in each year engaging with these essentials in increasingly complex situations as they move from one grade level to the next it's not that they have to start over it's that the learning in the first year or or in the previous year about communication or growth mindset translates itself to
014how then that is amplified in the next grade level and so on and so forth with the goal being that as students you know graduate in 12th grade they have not only set forth and mastered the curriculum standards set forth by new york state but they also have this kind of additional seal of approval from a district in which they've actually articulated and demonstrated that they've lived up to the values that the district orients it's also extremely helpful in terms of teachers as they sit and start thinking about designing experiences for students or designing assessments for students these six essentials kind of provide the backbone for how they start thinking about students interacting with curriculum um and it's a very unique process and so where we sit today is holdings in a situation to really
015capitalize on this work and start thinking about how these essentials manifest themselves in the work and the stroke i can't say that word my apologies the strategic coherence plan um provides that road map so to speak um last year a significant amount of work was done to advance the district's uh mission in achieving um you know what was laid out in the strategic coherence plan what well before myself you know there was a cohort of educators that met during the year that really examined the attributes of a quality curriculum what those actually are and what those look like and beyond that once they reached consensus was also thinking about well how do we document that how do we make that shown and known within our curriculums and these documents were revised and worked on and
016revised multimultiple times and so what came out of that was a document where we were looking to utilize this year k-12 universally as a way of creating common language and common framework for our staff to be thinking about how they not only document the standards they've been working on but also how these bigger concepts such as the helding essentials live within their curriculums to start this horizontal and vertical articulation additionally the haldane curriculum council with its purpose and its norms provides a really great structure for us to continue this work moving forward and so as uh we spoke about at the first haldane curriculum council one of the major initiatives that we have this year in the area of curriculum instruction is really going back to that roadmap provided working off what was provided to
017us last year and really a very nice natural evolution of this work is taking it out of the exploration range and really putting into the implementation range k12 and so as it says there you know what we're looking to do this year is to really create a system that ensures the ongoing development and implementation of vertically and horizontally aligned curriculum that supports the attainment of the heldain essentials and the great thing about this is this work is already happening this isn't to say that we're starting over not only are the accomplishments of what was done by this cohort in the the held in curriculum council last year but teachers have been doing this for for a while the real work is trying to just refine some of that work creating this common language and be
018thinking about how this document provides a nice framework for us to start having conversations deeper conversations about how the haldane essentials are manifested within our curriculum's k-12 it's really exciting and really uh very much so looking forward to working through that i'm going to transition briefly here to human resources there's many facets to human resources obviously and then the slide that the graphic you have there is just a simple way of trying to to think about the different ways that human resources interacts within the school district um as i've transitioned into this role i've learned that the early on onsets with human resources have really dealt in a lot of compliance issues to start off with the beginning of the school year is um you just ripe with opportunities as the school year starts up
019there's lots of things that have to happen in terms of a compliance standard so some of these have been um you know covet continues to provide as that landscape changes and shifts continues to provide ways that the school districts need to be ensure that they're covered compliant in many ways in this year it's it's resulted in you know the staff testing as well as student testing and also in terms of looking at leave eligibility for individuals related to covert related absences or covert related illnesses there's an annual compliance training of district staff each year by the state of new york there are a series of tutorials or compliance trainings that all faculty and staff have to go through they tend to be also job specific so faculty and staff kind of have a certain set
020and then areas and maintenance have another ones and bus drivers have another one so working with my colleagues to ensure that you know this information is up to date and that everybody has been appropriately trained and has gone through those trainings that they have the appropriate information that they needed moving forward there's areas like the student level digital equity data collection that will be forthcoming that we are working on and again these are additional mandates from the state about how we collect data about from the community and those have changed slightly and so we're working on that one the teach system which is the system in the new york state education portal which is really deals with the certification of staff that could be a whole presentation long story short is there was a registration
021process in about 2016 and has since then required the registration process for individuals the first year of that five-year compliance is coming up and so it's really you know working with faculty and staff to make sure that they're going through the appropriate procedures to make sure that they're up to date on their certification issues that they're up to date in the teach system we've been assisting in the hiring process for certain vacancies that are there um obviously collaborating with building principles there's been labor relations with bargaining units and you know lastly is organizing and working with the professional development catalog both on a regional area and as well as a local district area the good news is in professional development is the human resources department works closely with the curriculum and instruction department and i
022tend to be the person for both of those so those conversations um are definitely happening seamlessly um but as dr bernante had uh referenced earlier in his updates i think that one of the things that's really been a foundation early on in in terms of human resources is thinking of this essential of a growth mindset is our human resources audit um and you know the idea was you know we condit conducted a voluntary audit of the human resources department on october 12th 13th and 14th so as dr bernante said a consulting firm had come down um and contr contracted for three days and as somebody new coming new into the role was a very extensive process there was a two-step on-site process there were interviews and individuals with about 23 titles in the district that
023were impacted by human resources and then they had requested what's called a document review phase of approximately 32 topics associated with the human resources department so a very thorough interview process with individuals on campus as well as a very thorough process for our policies that are on on file to evaluate those and as again dr bernante said the next phase talks about an objective report of findings with recommendations and i put in there non-judgmental because it's not about good or bad or where we are it's about where we are in our present state and using that information to grow as as we start thinking about solidifying um and it's really going to provide the district with great guidance on how to best move the hr department forward um based upon those findings um and as
024somebody who's coming in and transitioning into that role it was a great opportunity and i'm thankful that we actually had the opportunity to do it so early on um and i think it will act very much like the strategic coherence plan in the area of human resources it'll provide a nice road map or foundation for things for us to focus on in the future all right i will pause there and at this point take any questions it might be out there i'll start thank thank you for the comprehensive overview um i was particularly enthusiastic to hear um you reference all the great work that was done last year and how you're building upon it um and i know that was that seemed to me before this meeting to see your to your chief obligation but
025it's also great to hear a little bit more about the other hat you're wearing and sort of how elegantly you bring those two positions together and speak to how they um support one another so thank you for that yes welcome yeah i have a quick question on the curriculum piece which i'm super excited about um i'm going to opine here and you can tell me when when i'm wrong i would assume that for state curriculum guidelines and mandates and federal there are fairly specific these are the things you need to learn these are the things you need this is what competency and exceptional performance looks like in terms of knowledge base and skill set which totally makes sense because they have guidelines and instructions i'm interested in the level of resources and support available for
026defining the howling essentials because if i say problem solving that may have a very different my understanding of problems will be different from peggy's maybe different from sean's a and b what are sort of the resources that you're going to look for to say okay if we're going to define problem solving and infuse that into the mandated curriculum how do what are we measuring how are we doing all that sort of stuff yeah thank you um i absolutely agree and so some of that early work that i probably uh forgot to mention you know with about defining really what are the attributes of critical thinking what are the attributes of communication because i would tend to agree right those are words but if we don't have a common understanding of what we mean when we
027say those words we're going to be left up to having different interpretations and we're going to kind of be right back where we started which different things happening in different classrooms i do know that last year the building principals had facilitated a series during their faculty meetings of different ways of exploring each one of those topics excuse me each one of those essentials within their faculties to be starting to think about generating a common definition for what that looked like i also reference back to you know the first couple of superintendents conference stables we had at the beginning of the year were also spent looking at what does though what do those look like in grade level bands and so i guess my answer to it is it's ongoing work right it's happening kind of
028simultaneously and continuously as teachers are also looking into document their curriculum and i would say that that is a continued charge that we still have is refining what we believe to be those definitions of critical thinking or the held in essentials to making sure that we do have common attributes so to speak so when we say it in the high school it means the same thing that we're saying in the middle school as well as the elementary school in terms of resources that you say you know there is no shortage of different definitions through what these would look like i think what the building principles and their faculties have already looked at is they've already started to examine some of those definitions and start picking out some of the words and phrases and things that
029we like it's not about well i like this one more than that one it's like i like parts of this one and parts of that one and parts of this one and so as we work this year to kind of not only articulate our curriculums in those ways i think simultaneously the work we're also doing is continuing to come to consensus about what those essentials mean in terms of of common vocabulary for that thank you the human microphone i just wanted to add that i really appreciate in hearing the presentation that i feel like josh has implemented some of the essentials in his approach to implementing the essentials like i'm hearing words i like i really appreciate they're approaching this work with a growth mindset and that your communication is clear and positive um and
030i feel like that kind of top-down approach of how our administration is implementing the essentials will trickle into how it happens into the classroom and hopefully therefore it then trickles into how our students are therefore um embracing and embodying the work so um that's just what i wanted to say that i feel like you're implementing the essentials in your work with the essentials and i appreciate that thank you i mean i appreciate that and i would also say that you know the work of my colleagues in the faculty and staff of haldane prior to my arrival has you know really just set the table for this you know and as i stand here as you know the the director of curriculum i'm really just communicating the work that has happened in an extremely difficult year
031last year and it's really a testament to like i said my colleagues in the faculty and staff to to not put that work aside and continue that work so as we kind of come out of this end and start a new year which looks a little bit different than last year that we are that the haldane central school district is really in a really good position to move this work forward um based upon what had taken place last year yes thank unless you have anything to say dr bernante no no thank you so much mr thank you very much and now we'll move on to communication from the public uh you'll note that we last week we had a small conversation about changing the text slightly listen for the additional sentence but we just wanted
032to delineate that our first communication from the public would be in reference to or directly response to the special presentation and the agenda items and our second presentation or communication the public can be more broad issues to bring to the board the haldane board of education desires and values input from the entire school community the first public comment session is reserved for comments on any special presentations or active agenda items for those who wish to address the board please sign in state your name for the record please keep your remarks to three minutes or less disparaging remarks and discussion of district personnel are prohibited although we do not engage in dialogue we are listening so please leave your contact information with our district clerk catherine platt for prompt follow-up from the board president jen daly
033not sean mcnall or superintendent do we have any comments oh come on up sir [Music] hi my name's peter henderson i served on the board from 2012 to 2015. i had the pleasure of serving with peggy and jen and uh it's school board appreciation week and so i'm here just to say how much i appreciate your dedication and uh the thoughtful way that you approach and conduct business here i've thought about the school board a lot these past two years during covid and i'm so grateful to you and also to the administrative team [Music] ann and julia and all the faculty and the staff and all the parents and students for working together to to get through this no one could have picked a harder time to be on the school board and i can't
034imagine how hard it's been for you but i just want to say uh thank you very much for uh for all of your work and i haven't been in school in a while uh but it looks great so i wish you all the best thank you thank you so much thank you and thank you for your service and i for one didn't know that these past two years were going to be like this and so i don't know that i chose it but i'm happy to be here [Laughter] so now on to information reports uh our first report is from our student advisor luke perella that's your first time you joining us luke no pressure but uh if you have a report to provide it'd be great great yep so i got a few things
035i just wanted to highlight so first thing recently i think we've seen a lot of participation in school events so it's seen uh it's been a good time for school spirit so earlier this month we had spirit week we saw a lot of participation among all the grade levels i think that was good and additionally the homecoming dance we saw over 86 percent of high school students in attendance so it's been a lot more than than typical numbers so it's that's been good too and then that brings me into uh within the extracurriculars uh and clubs we've had a lot of new club members over the past uh or since school has started so we've had we've seen many clubs actually double in size from last year and it's been uh it's new clubs have
036been forming and i think it's been it looks it looks promising as uh clubs begin to have their first meetings and and sort of move forward into doing some actual stuff and then finally just i was talking with the student council they've mainly been working on the their trunk retreat it's like halloween activity sort of for elementary students uh it's gonna be happening on the 29th and so there's currently collecting candy donations and working on organizing that so that's just that's all all right thank you so much any questions for luke i do have a question before before you move on to something else tell us something about yourself given that this is your first meeting well i run cross country and track so i think that's been a big part of my high school
037so that's one thing okay where's the trunk or treat uh i believe it's happening [Music] in the parking lot i think out there um i'm not sure on the details but i know there's a lot of flyers been handed out so who won the tug of war that's a bit of a sore subject he doesn't care to talk about it or it's not the seniors but we know we did have a first place finish in the puzzle i was on the team humility above all things thank you so much mr perella miss jamming good evening i wanted to highlight a few things that have been going on at the elementary school in my report i mentioned that we have started off using the new mtss plan and we got to have our first few student
038support team meetings and our first data team meeting which have been exciting there may seem like a small change in name from child study team to student support team but just inviting additional members and being committed to getting a bigger team for brainstorming around how we support children in different ways has been an exciting transition our clinicians met to be trained on safety care and how we support students with de-escalation and supports as they might enter a crisis situation which happened last week and that was uh that's something that we started just before kovid closed us down and then with all of the restrictions on distancing and contact and such because it does involve a physical component in the training was put on pause so it was exciting to get back on track and how
039we can support children and make sure that our staff are trained for the event of a crisis throughout the district we've had a lot of exciting community events we had fire safety day and our local fire department along with dan valentine came and spoke to our students and it just speaks to how the howling essentials are just embedded in so many things as he talked to the students about problem solving and critical thinking if they were to face an emergency and then also going home and advocating to their parents about having safety drills at home and the questions the students asked and discussed showed just how the teachers are talking and using that kind of vocabulary with them in the classroom and they were bringing it to their questions we saw that again yesterday and
040today as we had our author visits for literacy week our first author was clarabel ortega she was in person yesterday which was also an exciting change to have a visitor in person we were able to do that outdoors with our third through fifth grade students and she was able to share how obstacles and difficulties had challenged her throughout her life and that at times she might have wanted to give up or choose a different path but that with perseverance she was able to make it through those things and really demonstrated a growth mindset and how she approached becoming an author and was able to speak about that with the students they might have been a little more excited when she shared that she also wrote for marvel but they they definitely were asking questions about
041her journey and how um how she made it through those different obstacles as well yesterday to this morning our author originally was a different author but there was an emergency for her so we had ruth chan who is the author and illustrator of a new book elpactory which is about an alpaca who has a factory that packs you for new adventures and she spoke to the students about her process with writing and illustrating these books and the students began asking her questions about was she ever frustrated when she was writing was she ever frustrated when she was going through this really complicated process of illustrating her books did she ever go outside the lines and how did she get so good at it and she was explaining to them that yes she makes mistakes and
042she hits these challenges but adults do that kids do that and working through them you learn a lot from your mistakes and then one of miss spinelli's students got on camera because this one was on zoom and asked so do you see yourself as having a growth mindset um which that was the last question after that we just we couldn't we just needed to end there so she and she didn't know what a growth mindset was with that phrasing so the young lady in miss spinelli's class proceeded to define a growth mindset for her explain to her that it would mean that she could get better at things and didn't give up and would have a positive attitude about it and she said well uh yes now i will know what to say i have
043but that's exactly what i think you should have as a growth mindset so um our author visits were really rewarding not just in the fact that we were meeting these wonderful people who were sharing their stories but the questions that our students were asking showed that even at this point in the year they're they're hearing these messages from their teachers and they are um really internalizing them and and using that in their in their work in their thinking great questions nope middle school dr silky good evening everyone i can echo christine and say that the middle school was treated to have jj and chris grabenstein visit us today and they also talked about growth mindset and editing process and they then they spoke about how in even just the first page of their latest book
044shine they went through many many many edits and they took the time to encourage the kids about that and our students really took to that and they asked questions about if there was ever a time that they wanted to give up or when working together was there ever a time that they disagreed so they really our students were really thinking and being mindful about the process of creating published writing so i hope that some budding authors stem from these great literacy weeks that the pta is treating our students to so thank you to the pta at the end of this week very exciting and also along the line of the housing essentials the sixth grade team is taking their students to the taconic outdoor education center the grade is going in two shifts half on
045thursday and half on friday and the idea for the project came out of the fact that when the sixth grade teachers were doing their professional learning plans they chose as a team to focus on wellness and in talking with each of the teachers individually and what might you know get the year started with um the focus on wellness this project came out of that and miss mccullum i special thank you to her because she reached out to um mr stoll at the taconic outdoor education center and he put her in touch with a grant program called connect kids to parks and the whole process i think has been already enriching for the sixth grade team and the students are going to have a wonderful time this thursday and friday so we're really excited about that
046and then lastly hot off the presses at our last workshop meeting was the fact that the middle school is going to move forward with the community read for this year and in the time that's passed danielle pc our seventh grade ela teacher and terry ecke's our librarian procured a selection of books and the theme was chosen which is the one of the enduring themes from for social studies of migration and the movement of people and the three jeff silverstein our vp for the middle school from the pta collected up the parents that are going to be willing to read the three books with the faculty and the books came in today so it's very exciting the three selections are refugee by alan gratz a night divided by jennifer nielsen and heap by mike lupica not
047lupika lupica so we're looking forward to uh reading the books and helping to have that selection out to the community by the end of november so that lots of wintertime reading can happen for a community read the ideally the week of march 21st outdoors so we'll be excited about that thank you thank you miss sniffin try to keep mine short you already heard from me once today but in addition to congratulating the students for the national merit scholar we were notified early last week that we have three students that will be competing at the area allstate which does take place in our own county if you remember last year we had one student that went up to the full state uh music festival but this is the area allstate so sophie saban uh conrad white
048and elaine llewellyn will all be competing so they've been working very hard with mr rich and with jeff stein on their individual pieces for that upcoming festival in addition to that i know christine had mentioned their mtss data team is up and running the high school had their first meeting last week at the five week notice period so same thing reviewing many data points on our students and discussing ways to better support students that may have different individual needs and at the same time looking at students that maybe we need to figure out how to challenge them uh that their growth is exceeding where we would think they would be and they need that extra extra push so that was a great meeting last week in addition to that i do need to thank the
049guidance department and our department chairs so the week after homecoming we had a very busy week again in the high school with psats sats and the 910 parent night i thought maybe i would just read a quick email as it relates to 9 10 parent night and feedback that we received we received quite a bit of positive feedback from parents i think some of you maybe saw it on social media and then there were a lot of emails that were flying so one email i find the 910 parent i found the 910 parent night to be incredibly informative i never realized how important it is to forecast the courses my kids will take and need to in order to illuminate a pathway to maximize their success i was particularly impressed with the boces courses and
050experiences offered while the presentation on sat nact was most enlightening thank you to all who were involved the night was highly organized and ran very smoothly thank you um so i just i want to thank the department chairs uh for their work and mr manny for being uh a part of that thank you i actually have a really strong memory of of i really do you know like i really i really do there there was that and then there was something else that happened i remember early on there was a like a financial like the financial aid night which is now actually only virtual they're not doing that in person still so we did send out that email to all high school parents i mean obviously it's uh most important that your senior parents are
051watching that as they're filling out fafsa in different financial aid forms um but we did send that out a few weeks ago to parents but it's it's a recording now no it's just the ninth the the the night for ninth and tenth grade parents it's just such a great idea it's so good that that keeps going so thank you yeah we will be doing uh this december we will be doing new this year a junior parent night we haven't done that it'll be the presentation that we do in the classrooms to the junior students that i don't think the information always makes its way home so more information to come on junior parent night thank you miss sniffen ms browns good evening this month i wanted to share with the board a couple of updates
052as you know over the past two years we've been working on our dialectical behavior therapy initiative using dialectical behavior therapy informed practices with our counselors and then also expanding those practices into the classroom so just one example that i got to witness this month was with our middle school counselor she's our new middle school counselor leanna festo she teaches a sixth grade guidance class and i was able to see her teaching mindfulness to our sixth graders she had organized several lessons on mindfulness one where they went into the garden and they talked they they sat and they took in what they were hearing what they were seeing what they were smelling what they were feeling in the garden um and then i got to see the next class where they talked about that experience and
053what it meant to them and how it helped them and what mindfulness means and then she organized stations within the classroom with different or different mindfulness activities such as word searches writing activities more physical kinesthetic activities that the students could do and it was an entire lesson that every student was engaged in and every student was participating in and personally as a parent of a sixth grader i know the changes that these kids are experiencing coming from elementary school into middle school and the challenges that they're facing so it was really a positive experience to see the students being able to take this pause in their day and really think about their emotional social emotional well-being and really her incorporating that that wellness into her classroom for their day for entire lessons so i wanted
054to share that because we continue to expand different aspects of dbt into the classroom this year one of our department goals is to explore new and existing strategies for teaching students who struggle with reading teaching them decoding skills teaching them and coding skills particularly our students who are in need of tier three supports students who are are well below grade level in reading and need very specific explicit instruction in those areas and not being a literacy specialist i'm very interested in this and i rely a lot on our professionals here that are trained in literacy so i was glad to find out that andrea saunders our literacy specialist jen gernan who's one of our special ed teachers showed a really intense interest in being involved in this work and leading this work so what we're
055doing is looking at what we're current what we currently do in the district and how we teach reading to these learners in district and sharing those strategies jen and andrea are very active members of our student support team so they come with tools and they come with strategies and when teachers bring a student who's struggling in specific areas they pinpoint those areas and then share strategies at those meetings and then we touch base after several weeks of implementing those strategies so we're going to look at what we do and making sure that we're we share that information amongst all grade levels and all special educators and ais instructors and then look on the outside what other programs are there what other materials should we be looking at later this month we're going to a dyslexia
056workshop and we'll be able to get some knowledge from our colleagues so i'm looking forward to this work and i'm really excited about our professionals that want to be involved in this work they're providing ongoing staff development after school to to provide additional instruction and i i know they will continue to do so we'll keep you updated so i'm going to talk about something that my own organization does but it's for free so i'm not i'm not so the the the there's a really amazing website that grew out of work that was funded by the us department of education for a long time it's it's called the national center for intensive intervention it's actually like a place where you can go and like search for grade levels topic areas and and find different resources both
057assessments and interventions as well as information like about the the evidence base that exists for them it's actually a phenomenal resource i don't have anything to to do with it but i mean people who use it i i think find it really very helpful so anyway i appreciate you sharing the resource because we are we're gathering resources it's just it's a good database so anyway thank you yeah tara what is that what is the guidance class oh so in sixth grade all of our sixth graders take a guidance class with the guidance counselor and they talk about career development they talk about social emotional well-being they you know work on social skills things like that things that they need for middle school to help them prepare for middle school and um liana festo is incorporating
058a lot of our dbt work into she's infusing that into her guidance class i think it's an every other day is that right or is it every day quarterly okay thank you thanks one more question sorry sorry one last question can you talk a little bit about and this may be a question for you as well can you talk a little bit about the intersection between the work that you're doing on finding new resources for intervention in students that need significant ela language help and the work on curriculum i mean it feels like one of these matrixy type um efforts and so how did the two of you work together to make that happen in the best way so uh josh and i have had some conversations about this early on when he started and
059he talked to me about you know what's important in terms of curriculum um for me you know where do i see need and um you know my thoughts about curriculum within our department so i'm hoping that josh will be a resource to me as we search and will share his uh you know his expertise in terms of context and resources that he's using in the region to explore some of this so we've had some conversations about it but haven't done the direct work on curriculum yet okay cool thank you mr rounds no i said thank you thank you the most important two words of course um mr elder i think drawing a little bit off of what ms rounds just said you know my update was just to say that you know i think that
060teaching is a very complex art form and endeavor and people who want to stay on top of that are always looking for opportunities to grow on themselves and not only in their content knowledge but their pedagogical skills and their different techniques and skills within the classroom and i would say since the start of the school year the teachers at the helding central school district have enrolled in numerous different types of professional development some that are just one day kind of workshops and others that span multiple days throughout the school year and these come from a range of different professional organizations colleges and universities and local boces um uh local boces workshops and i think what happens when anytime an educator takes those professional development is obviously there's the attainment of skill and knowledge which is
061part of it but the other part is the interaction with people in other districts it's an opportunity to network and to create relationships and start seeing you know it goes back to my earlier presentation about how things are different in different schools around the same kind of curriculum and even to what ms rounds is saying is as she talks about her or she talks about the ais providers um who are people who are going to these is they start interacting with other educators in networking and this is where you really start get that collection of knowledge and start thinking of best practices you know many times unfortunately teaching can be a very kind of isolating activity right it's the day-to-day um and kind of getting and branching out and taking professional development not only leads
062to the attainment of new skills or new ways of thinking but also leads to you know dialogue in meeting individuals that you know operate on a similar platform or plane and you never know where those opportunities could go from there um but i think one thing that i i was struck by as as i transitioned into heldain is the number of professional developments that are actually created and offered by heldain teachers and then that are offered to teachers and then teachers sign up for them and i felt like this was just a really good diagnosis of a very healthy professional development cycle right you got edu educators who go out based upon some sort of need and attain some sort of knowledge or skill that they come back into their classroom they're trying it out
063they're perfecting it and then they get to the point where they feel like they can turn key this information back to other people um within their building which not only is cost effective and i don't mean as a negative but anytime you can build the expertise of your own faculty and staff and create a system where they're now becoming the training and building that expertise within a classroom you really get that job embedded professional development and really teachers start acting more out of silos and acting as resources for one another and so i've just seen since the beginning of the school year just a really great flurry of really well-intentioned professional development opportunities from staff from the guidance from building principles to make sure that these are targeted and intentional based upon the focus for
064the school year before you go can you talk a little bit about that can you talk about how either now or in the future you think about providing recommendations either at the district or cohort level for a professional development cycle or strategy based on what we're trying to do or at the individual level i just don't have any insight into how individual teacher or classroom teachers might choose or be guided to take particular course offerings sure so i think you know when we talk about that we're trying to make sure that things are strategic and coherent as much as possible and you know i go back to that planning document of the strategic coherence plan and the helding essentials you know things that we should be doing should be related to the attainment of you
065know what that document is provided as well as those six essentials right and so you know small changes that have happened prior to me coming here is you know in the process of selecting professional development you know that that teachers would go through that there is a place where they need to identify how this professional development leads or relates to one of those uh held in essentials and i think when you're thinking of a professional development cycle right i think it's it you know i do think it you know i don't have a chalkboard but it or a chalkboard whiteboard uh it is a cycle and so you're you know the best professional development plans are based upon what you're observing and seeing within a school year or school district and i think that that
066data can come from a bunch of places right it can come from classroom observations it can come through team meetings it goes through dialogue with teachers it comes through you know as you start talking about assessments and looking at performance and common assessments and start looking at trends from students in performance it starts teachers to have conversations about okay based upon this this might be an area of need that we're looking for or would want to do and so i think you're having that conversation kind of at different levels right you can have that as a district level you can look at that in building levels you can look at that as you know discipline specific levels you can look at grade level levels you know there's multiple ways of trying to engage in in
067that work that china tells what the need is and then it's trying to identify once you have that is to start thinking about okay where do we go what we think are good resources um in order to kind of learn from that and so some ways are to go out to professional development sometimes it's simply release time to get people together to start you know having in-depth conversations you know that that allows that cognition to take place about some of the planning and strategy that goes there so to kind of answer i don't think it's a one-shot but when you're talking about a i think what a healthy professional development cycle is it's born out of what we're noticing in trends within our own students and so it's really taking a look at well how
068are we monitoring and assessing students you know from individuals to also groups as well and i think that does have a lot of work to do with the curriculum that we have right the curriculum is the plan of how we're doing it and then there's the actual implementation of it and then there's how the students are actually learning it and demonstrating that and engaging in the kind of those conversations consistently we'll start making sure that we're at least the professional development that we're targeting is targeted for an intentional purpose thank you mr elder yep thank you mr cowan good evening dr benate and members of the board we had an unforgettable homecoming weekend that started with our pep rally on the turf field on friday october 8th we couldn't have asked for a more perfect
069day of weather the afternoon was filled with fun laughter school spirit and all of our students did a great job participating in various activities on the field which included the tug of war and the puzzle competition i want to share a well-deserved thank you to kristin paparo marilyn grenise joe virgidamo and ed crow who collaborated to facilitate this special event for our student body following the pep rally was a full ticket of home contest played by our varsity teams between friday and saturday i'm so proud of the effort all of our teams gave over homecoming weekend and continue to be proud of the effort our athletes offer each day during halftime of the football game we honored the inductees for the 2021 hall of fame class and formally accepted these folks into our hall of
070fame the next day at the thayer hotel at west point the hall of fame luncheon was a fantastic event with so many people who have played a role in defining why haldane is a special place inductees shared stories from the past and thank teachers coaches students and staff for playing a role in their success however the most memorable part of homecoming weekend was learning how supportive this community is to our athletic program this great community assisted with renting donating setting up and breaking down portable lights ran concessions decorated the turf field cheered our teams on honored our senior athletes and ensured the hall of fame luncheon was a flawless event a special thank you goes out to our hall of fame committee blue devil booster club our football association and girls soccer association however i
071know there are many many more people who deserve our appreciation so many folks play an important role and will receive a special thank you from the athletic office i want to say thank you to everyone who volunteered their time and support to make our homecoming weekend a truly great experience for our students and families we could not have done it without your help thank you to our community you mr kellen mr walsh good evening there's a lot of reference this evening to you all all the events that have taken place over the past month uh facilities department supports all these events you know we talked about 9 10 parent night homecoming board of education meetings and facilities and transportation support those through obviously transportation services custodial services and event setup and breakdown for perspective since
072the last workshop meeting which was a month ago september 21st we supported 51 away athletic events through transportation services and over 49 events that took place on campus and that's in addition to all our normal regular duties that we perform throughout the day in terms of capital construction we continue to move forward for the windows in the elementary school the shade systems were delivered and it's installed when we did the walkthrough last month they were still temporary uh shades so that's terrific that we're continuing to move forward for the electrical mechanical phase that's phase two of the capital project those bids opened up october 12th we received three bids for those for that project all three are competitive bids they're currently uh being reviewed by the architect and engineer record we'll be meeting with them
073this week this week and hopefully have a little bit more uh information in the future and hopefully an award for that aspect and that's all thank you thank you great so now we're going into consent agenda minutes may have a motion please these are our minutes from the october 5th business meeting um the one thing we might want to address now is uh we had discussed thinking about some time in the calendar for this second retreat um to discuss many of the topics that came up in our diversity equity inclusion joint retreat with garrison i think that dr bernante you and jen had discussed maybe january or february as being the best time great um i don't know about this uh how we should begin if someone wants to volley forth some availability dr bernante
074yours is probably the key one i'll be there great okay i just would stay away from february 15th february 15th not that it's a tuesday i think we're already meeting that evening anyway yeah it's my son's birthday well does it make more sense for us to meet on a tuesday when we're already going to be meet and meeting and about what should be the duration of this a couple of hours two hours yeah typically i think we've uh we've benefited from having at least two hours together in retreat it's always better to schedule a little bit more time so i'd advise we'd be prepared to schedule three hours and if we end early that's great great all right so let's say what is our before one of our meetings possible or is that too early
075that's not for me that's really coming out of the board if we want to try to do it before a meeting like january 18th or you know feb maybe that first one in february february 1st yeah maybe february first that's better great yeah candle moss the candle retreat i'll be uptown february is the 18th uh an option peggy although i'm not showing a meeting on the 18th for some reason oh it's there sorry there okay 18 54 30. is that good for you too maggie perhaps yeah it's hard to know man that sounds like a good that sounds good for me great wow did we say 4 30 is that what people we did yeah great as long as somebody's serving us dinner dinner will be provided don now everyone has definitely put it in
076their calendars dinner will be provided dinner great um all right i think i left it at all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed no great all right on to committee minutes uh building ground committee in the wellness committee yes dear mike well thank you um on to uh committee minutes business and grounds committee and wellness committee minutes i didn't want to say that we didn't note that in our wellness committee we did uh note an intention to make some slight adjustments to the charge throughout the year to propose to the board just to update the language with maybe with regard to the haldane essentials as we move forward if there's no other notes then go on to consent agenda financial can i have a motion please second any discussion all those in favor
077any opposed no consent agenda personnel may i have a motion please second any discussion just a comment great one i just wanted to i did not include this in a friday report so i just wanted to speak to it item seven uh which is the approval of an smoa between the district and the haldane faculty association i just wanted to speak to it for a moment the several years ago the district and the unit agreed to include into transition from what was historically contracted services for occupational therapy uh to hiring our own staff member a couple of years after that we made a similar transition for a board certified behavior analyst we had typically historically contracted out for that service we decided to hire our own individual to for that position both good moves both
078of those positions are now recognized as part of the teachers unit in the recognition clause however those are not tenure eligible positions in new york state so this smoa memorializes the additional compensation that our bcba and our ot will receive when they reach a commensurate level of experience and service to the district as our teachers so just in a nutshell that's what this is about great and also on a note the request for leave of absence by ms catherine skroka we hope that she gets well very soon and we look forward to her return um new business i'm sorry i commented oh sure oh we didn't vote thank you so much see line all those in favor any oppo any opposed no great on to new business ms platt be it resolve that upon the
079recommendation 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 have a motion please second all those in favor aye aye any any opposed no all right this is our second communication from the public all i'll note here is that this is a common session for comments on all school district matters does anybody would like to come up to the podium any more adulation from you peter no okay great thank you so much all right and moving on to the board committee reports um i don't know if there are any anything from policy no nope nope we have a meeting scheduled but no no no news great and uh western putnam county school board association update dr bernante maggie
080and i attended the uh cultural framework conversation we thought we might talk a little bit about that now i don't know yeah i would like to start how about you phil yeah well that was uh i did take my mask off um i i really appreciated the the overview and i was uh particularly interested in hearing about the strategies that peekskill was employing peakskill had provided a more comprehensive overview as a district that's engaged in work related to diversity equity and inclusion and of particular note there was a lot there they have their very diverse community as i'm sure we're all familiar i think a 70 percent uh latino population uh and dr mauricio david their superintendent spoke to the importance of them to uh through their hiring process of trying to be more strategic
081in hiring a staff recruiting and hiring a staff that is more reflective of their student population and some of the success uh that they've had with that and that resonated with me i think that's something we've talked to from time to time here but when i saw the list of colleges and universities that they specifically reach out to teacher education programs that they specifically reach out to and there may have been a few other on that slide i have to get that slide i think it's really reflective of a district that's bringing a high level of intention in recruitment uh uh and um definitely took away some some good things from that yeah and i would say also that the document that was provided for us which was uh through the state as well as
082some of the powerpoint uh uh there i think there were two different powerpoints that were shared would be good i think for us to incorporate as we're thinking about the retreat moving forward some combination of what we already have for discussion and maybe i'll give you as an opportunity to discuss it with those who weren't there maggie yeah i thought it was interesting to note that i mean they've been working on this for what did they say 10 years or so which is you know makes us seem sort of behind the behind the wheel with that but but i thought that was interesting and the other thing that resonated with me which um which i thought was interesting was that one of the really specific use cases uh was making sure that teachers and libraries
083had book sources for every culture represented at the school um you know and to a degree you know obviously they have a much more diverse student body than we do but sort of low-hanging fruit in terms of when we're thinking about edi that's sort of a easy might not be the right word but um you know i know that a lot of um the folks that work in the library and a lot of the teachers that how they are already working on that to make sure that there's a more diverse selection of books in the classroom and whatever i just feel like that's a you know that's an interesting place to sort of start so really k through 12 but i think we hear more about k through 5 just because it's part of the
084program we do the elementary school but that's great okay um moving on to the board reflections anyone have any board reflections no no no great how about you jen you have anything you want to say i'd just like to reflect on the fact that sean mcdonald has done a fantastic job tonight and i am very appreciative of your board service john and you're stepping up to be um step in to the uh spokesperson role this evening thank you so much i had a sense that if i asked you you might say something like that so it's nice to have that confirmed thank you uh dr benante you're doing a great job i'm going to get out of the way all right then i make a motion to adjourn the meeting exactly all those in favor
085aye any opposed thank you meeting adjourned [Music] you