001[Music] hi good evening everyone welcome to the mount vernon city school district's september 21st school board meeting please stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all trustee lindsay here trustee kerwin president trustee redd trustee white president president saunders president okay we have a forum thank you there is no legal requirement to recognize in public public comment at meetings of the board of education however the board recognizes the critical importance of community discourse and involvement in education of mount vernon's children and accordance members of the public are invited to speak at each regularly scheduled board meeting subject to the terms of the board policy a speaker must register in
002advance by no later than 4 pm the day of the meeting by contacting the district clerk in person at 165 north columbus avenue mount vernon new york by phone at 914-665-5235 or by email the board welcomes all respectful comments whether praise or criticism however identifying and criticizing a specific student parent teacher administrator or other mount vernon educational official is strictly prohibited any such complaint must be presented and addressed through the proper administrative channels each speaker is allowed in three minutes to speak up to one minute may be used for the speaker to summarize and conclude their remarks if appropriate board trustees and or the superintendent or other staff members at the direction of the superintendent may immediately respond to a speaker's remarks our first speaker tonight is cynthia crenshaw good afternoon all my purpose here
003tonight is to talk about the proposed charter school some talking points is funding the equity and access of special education and enl students teachers quality and certification excellent academic programs and options for high schools currently exists in our schools the mount vernon school systems when we fund charters we defund public schools mount vernon schools offers high quality and diverse academic programs and options for all high school scholars and family all means and we mean all most of the schools in mount vernon city school district out form the charter schools why do charters come open in communities with high number of residents living in poverty of people of color equity and access must be the cornerstone to ensure high quality learning experience and outcome for all scholars including special education and scholars and english as a
004new language the current charter in mount vernon have almost no or zero close to special education and nearly zero percent of english as a new language students the current charter school in mount vernon do not serve students with the greatest educational needs such as special education and english as a new language the goal is to have schools that support and meet the needs of all our children and families and it teaches quality and certification the majority of teachers in the current charter schools are not certified certification is not a requirement at the charter schools if teachers are not adequately trained that it becomes increasingly challenging to provide scholars and families with excellent academic programs and support the quality of education at all charter schools is compromised by the fact that charter school teachers on average
005have fair fewer years of experience than teachers at traditional public schools uh this is my life is my question is is there a special funding for charter schools the minute they are given the green light to operate in mount vernon do they get some kind of special funding and as i said most charter schools they tend to come into our neighborhoods with um children of color and try to teach our kids charter schools are public schools like district public schools they are funded according to enrollment called ada and receive funding from the district and the state according to the number of students attending i feel this will be a ripping effect for public schools if we let all of these charter schools come in here there will be layoffs and we might even have some
006schools closing when a child leaves the public schools maybe we should consider doing an exit interview and ask parents why they are leaving what can we do to make it better the new school that's on grammington avenue came on parker's property soliciting our parents the after-school parents maybe we should consider having security outside of the building to watch such such action as this it's coming to be i guess a doggy dog situation are these charter schools under the same umbrella is this a such a situation where in the future the board of aid will not be in effect and charters will be funding funding their own board of ed the new school that opened on gramaton she's a lifelong queen's resident that opened school on gramaton why not open it up in queens since she's
007a lifetime community i'm a lifetime community in mount vernon and i'm interested in what's in going on in mount vernon is charter schools a lucrative business that's why so many are coming to mount vernon a little a lot of entrepreneurs sees mount vernon as an easy target like they're trying to open up a boys transit group home right across from our elementary school like they're trying to bring the cannabis in on 3rd street and 4th avenue which will be a depot for yonkers um mamaroneck and the bronx and looking at this this article which i kept i just want to let you know they're planning on another school called intellect prep and they are expecting to draw six percent of the students from mount vernon and the remaining 40 percent from yonkers and surrounding community
008communities so mount vernon um we better wake up we better try to save our public schools because i believe it might be a ripping effect that you guys might be out and it might be the charter schools that we'll be doing having a board of ed so just think about that i have a petition here if anybody wants to sign it to say no to this charter school that they're trying to bring into mount vernon mount vernon knights open your eyes stay effective and we can make it go thank you [Applause] oh and one more thing um dc superintendent thank you i was very impressed last time i came here and you said you was coming to parker and you came the next day that was impressing to me thank you very much appreciate it
009[Applause] our next speaker warren mitch well i think um bc may have a response to ms crenshaw do you want to i will just let everybody's okay our next speaker is warren mitchell good evening again madam president vice president board members my illustrious doctor bc ladies and gentlemen okay i'm trying to be quick and get through my time when i'm running over my time i am uh the treasurer for the mount vernon high school pta so just want to make a quick mention that tomorrow is freshman orientation at the high school so if you have a student who is a freshman at the high school you should make sure you're there with your child tomorrow between five and seven pm um the educational foundation is uh big and is very important you can find out
010information on the district's site i'm not going to steal the thunder away from someone else who's here to speak on it and i'm going to ride the window miss miss cynthia on everything you just had to say about charter schools at 110 percent i'm going to sign that sheet before i leave because understand that charter schools are not the cure for anything what they are is basically you can almost say it's a dignified money grab they know the money is guaranteed because it's coming from the state right meanwhile they can have the same issues that our students in our district have but i really want to ask the question how many students this year returned back to the district from charter schools now i'm asked a question i'd really like to know that i think
011the public would like to know because it says something to the state of what our district where it really is it's not in this dumps place where everybody or certain people want to con continue to keep saying there's obviously some reason because students came back and i'd like i really would like to know the information um also i'm sorry um as far and also i don't know if anybody's paid attention but over the past three to six months the amount of people who've been hired in this district is ash is just it's amazing and uh our assistant or superintendent of hr manned that that entire operation with the grace of dr bc and if anybody doesn't realize that dr bc has great integrity in her in her cabinet they should pay attention to that because
012we were in a place missing a lot of positions at the end of last year and our assistant superintendent of hr grinded to get those seats filled and there's much more to do but we need to pay attention give everybody flowers while they can smell them right okay um so i just want to end and say that i still haven't heard anything about it being on buildings and grounds committee and i do want to ask the question about over at mandela two things number one the children have not been able to use their playground in at least two school years because this place these these developer came in in their building they put up all of this netting is nowhere in the contract does it say hey we're gonna come build this building it's ours
013you're not going to get any money out of it but we're going to shut down your playground for your kids i understand safety issues but can we look into why it's still not being used it's still unable to be used and can we look into do we have something in line you know i know our assistant superintendent of business uh we have lines in the budget regarding nothing but mud that there is to play on over at mandela as well there's no grass at all and there were children last year who i got a call from someone i got a call from someone last year when i was on the board they said this their great-grandchild fell and mud slipped fell almost drowned in the puddle she had to come bring clothes to him i
014talked about this while sitting in one of them seats over there i want to know if hopefully is there something going on this year so that we can see hopefully by the spring they get to see some green space again because they don't have it all right and again that buildings and ground committee will be very nice warren yes ma'am we have not set up a meeting yet but um as soon as we do would you include me can i be already on the list god bless you trusty white vice president white thank y'all so much and i miss y'all still okay thank you miss harris our next speaker so good evening i wanted to respond to mr mitchell's comments having to do with mandela so about a month ago we finished a beautiful place
015surface at mandela which is about 1500 square feet where the children are able to play it's a soft surface so nobody can get hurt and it's the model for what we're doing in other schools where we're redoing the surface of the playground or expanding the surface of the playground as we are at parker school which several board members were involved in and so we're replacing mud with uh very very comfortable beautiful play surfaces we've seen some pictures of the mandela it almost looks like a swimming pool it's so pretty and they have basketball area and yes part of the playground is still not open but we need to wait until that building is completed to make sure it's safe before we allow the children to be next to where that construction is taking place thank
016you okay our next speaker is miss harris with h harris did you ever get her phone number good evening everyone um much of what i wanted to say has been already spoken about an address but i will just reiterate in my own way because i usually don't do well with notes it's all in my head when i heard of just today this morning i was when far away out of town when i heard about another charter school and i've already discussed the fact that we have one that came in sort of in the dead of night under the radar nobody knew it was going to be here whatever anybody wants to say i made sure i look it up a charter school may say it's not for profit but that's not true and we all
017know that then who doesn't know it can look it up and i wasn't sure myself so i went to look it up and not for profit as we all know is really not a not-for-profit because you take a salary and you can build a good light with a non-profit and that's what a charter school is it is a profit school and it is a good place to come to mount vernon because the attitude of a lot of people and i can say that all hearty land some of you may believe it is true and you can try it for yourself where people get tired of titan and they develop an appetite for so what this is not burned this is what happened and i think this is where we are now but don't get discouraged
018please encourage everyone to get into the fight we do not want to lose our school system to another for profit because they're people who are invested in these schools who are going to make a profit out of our children and as one speaker already said the teachers don't have to be qualified they're not certified and what goes on there is subpar education as far as i see with the two that are well the one that has been here for a while now amani they don't have any place for the children to play maybe i'm mistaken because i've looked around and they're two locations and i don't see a playground and i'm sure somewhere in the education curriculum there has to be time for play the children need time out of the classroom to do something
019physical and if that is not there i don't think our tax dollars which we all work so very hard for to be given away to them while our children and our teachers and our education population go unwanted i'm not sure what the process is but if this board has anything to do with the approval process i'm asking you not to approve it and if you are not responsible for it i'd like you to find out what we as the public need to do to stop this in other words we want to make sure that this dies before it gets its first step thank you oh and i also want to thank um trustee gail for reaching out to me about the um my topic about recycling um i'm not sure who is trustee gail i
020spoke him on the phone so if i can see who he is oh there you are okay nice to meet you thank you for reaching out and i hope some other people will join me thank you i'm looking forward to it [Applause] latoya anderson good evening everyone my name is latoya anderson i have a daughter who attends the denzel washington school of the arts and i'm here today to bring two concerns to your attention um the first one is the new intimate campus portal um i am speaking from a parent perspective now because i was able to log into the parent section so we would like to know if additional features will be added at a later date and the reason i'm asking that question is because you know there are parents in mount vernon
021district whose intentions are to be engaged stay connected in order to be empowered and we would like to see what is happening in the classroom so that we can better understand monitor and participate in the educational process of our children currently what i'm seeing on the new infinite campus portal parent portal it has only the message center the calendar and the schedule it has fees and more but i don't know what those are for but the only benefit for us now is the schedule missing our the assignment tab the grade such as the progress report where we can access progress report report card and transcript the grade book updates and the attendance which is very important for high school parents because we know when we get those robocalls it only says our child was absent
022and for us to know which class we have to log in i mean before we use omaxes we were able to log into home access and see what class if they're late we can see that they're late for class if they're missing an assignment we can see that so i am huge on parent engagement and we all know that parent engagement has a direct connection to student success so in order for students to be successful the parents need to be engaged in their child's education therefore i'm axin i know there is a possibility for these other tabs to be added because i did my research and i saw that other schools on the district had them so i'm just hoping that we're not like doing the basic or getting the basic but we should be
023getting the premium as we so deserve so that's my question to the board and to superintendent dr bennett conroy my also concern is our resource room teacher from the denzel washington has been removed and placed at the steam school and our children are at getting the services our children with iep that deserve the services that are not currently being serviced so we're asking if we can get back our resource room teacher or if you can please provide a resource room teacher as soon as possible thank you that's all i have to say [Applause] dr gabriton good evening everyone so i'm here today as the district diversity equity and inclusion coordinator i looked up the process of how to file a complaint for a charter school violation we've had received several parents who complained they were
024being solicited at parker school several teachers received flyers on their car from the new intellis charter school so i'm here tonight to officially ask the school board to do something about that as part of the process of my official complaint to new york state charter school association parents are complaining that they're being harassed and little children are being confronted by strangers to apply to these schools that is very inappropriate and we want to ensure that people who are addressing us are students are safe and this is happening at dismissal time or teachers are taking pictures of these flies they're finding in their car they choose to work in mount vernon because they believe in the children of mount vernon and they believe they have a good reason to be here so this is my official
025complete the board as i plan to complain to the state about these actions thank you [Applause] janine fatale good evening everyone my name is janine fertill i'm a parent of three students in the mount vernon's team i'm at the mount vernon city school district i'm also the ptsa president at the mount vernon steam academy the first topic i want to bring up tonight are the charter schools has a decision already been made on whether or not to bring a new charter school to mount vernon will i know there's a meeting on september 28th will there be a representative from new york state or suny education present at that meeting to address parent concerns and also can someone explain the impact of a new charter school what it will have on the mount vernon city school
026district because as a parent i'm not really familiar with how bringing a charter school happens in a school district and so i'm wondering like if a subject matter expert would be here or someone who at least knows to explain it to me as a parent or as a community member the second issue i want to bring up is that um notifications i think latoya kind of touched up on it um in the past whenever my high schooler would scan into the building there would be a notification sent to me saying your child scanned in the building at this time those notifications have not been coming is there a way that we can start those notifications and also like my daughter she was absent the other day from school and i didn't receive a call saying
027that she was absent and so with parents we rely on our kids to be honest we rely on our kids for information but sometimes it's helpful if we have a little more support and um latoya also mentioned this um before i could also go on to home access and look to see if my child was late to class because they would give different color codes but like i'm not gonna go into detail about that but they would give different color codes on is the child's on time child's late did the child leave class early and that was really helpful for me um i still go into schoology to see the updates missing assignments i see the grades that are posted i see the syllabus that are posted so i keep tabs on his academics that
028way and then also we still don't have a crossing guard at the mom running steam academy i went to the city council meeting and they mentioned to me that um this has been going on since the 1970s they're not comfortable putting the crossing guard because it's not safe for the crossing guard to be there so i'm like if it's not safe for a crossing guard it's definitely not safe for our kids um and my final thing is i want to say thank you to drbc for subsidizing the school bus passes many parents are grateful and appreciative that the bus passes what the cost was lowered and the time of the past has been extended so thank you so much for everything [Applause] and our last one is tia paris with a p good evening everyone
029my name is tia parish i am a mother of two at lincoln school i'm also the vice president of rpta i just have a couple of concerns one is the charter school it is quite alarming to me this is also new information that i got so i don't have the details on everything but from what i do know and one big big concern to me is the funding our funding that is that our taxpayers and our homeowners put into our system going to funding this charter school that is coming to take away that access i have a son that has an iep the charter school will not support that i also have a grandfather that is 90 years old and our taxes are 25 000 with just with on the star program another school would
030absolutely put an increase in that um and i cannot have that happen so i am fully on board with your petition i'll be glad to sign it um most of the homeowners in mount vernon are seniors and this is going to be a devastation just a little thing this past quarter was over 4 800 for a 90 year old man that's it can't happen so i i i really need whoever needs to you know help us step up and whatever we have to do as parents please let us know because i'll be gladly on that bus to do it and then lincoln school we have a la flashing light um our for our speed limit that is not working our crossing guard was very um he's very awesome and he was able to get us
031one no turning sign but what we do need is the flashing light to be turned on in an additional speed limit sign he has gone and already made several complaints to the police station and they told him to go to the board or go to a city council meeting and then kind of dismissed him so i'm here advocating for that as well there is one speeding speed limit sign that's just the yellow sign then the one that flashes does not work and it's in the opposite direction of where you're actually able to see that there's a school that you're passing um and the cops i just seen it the other day will sit there and wait for people to speed by and ticket them but there's absolutely no sign for it so um see that
032it resolved as well thank you [Music] [Applause] thank you that concludes our public speaking is that it for the public comment you have something to say talk to dc oh yes i have a lot to say good evening everyone and i am going to start off by saying that i my mother always said whenever you start something you must always give thanks so i want to give thanks to my cabinet members and to the community and to the trustees and to the parent liaisons and to everybody else for supporting our kids back to school i mean the results that i've been getting was that everybody is happy the energy is positive and when i looked at mount vernon high school the hallways are clean kids are in class and a lot of people are talking
033about that so the vibes is is pretty good so i have to say that now this past weekend i was in albany let me rewind a little bit [Applause] last week friday i received an email from the state that we're going to have a new charter school i was very devastated when i saw that but then you know i said to myself i have to jump into action and get some things done so this weekend i was in saratoga with some other superintendents and with some people from the state and i know they've said good things about mount vernon and one of the things i said to them but you're approving another charter school so how good can it be anyway the conversation went on and i was told many things which i will not
034repeat today however at 2 39 today i receive an email from the state saying that the charter school has been denied yes so on september 28th we will not have that meeting because they said we shouldn't do that meeting there's no need to do that anymore and i do know though that sometimes when the regents said no they goes to the sunni charter and that was something that i mentioned but this came from the sunni charter this afternoon that has been denied so that's where we are there will be no charter school so but i will also be looking into the other charter schools you know because um i do have some concerns but i will not you know say that right now but there will no there will not be another charter school and
035i promise you that as long as i'm here i will fight the good fight and make sure and i know you will as well [Applause] to ensure that our schools continue to do well and we are doing well we are on the right path we are not there yet but this is a start we have to start someplace and i thank all of you for your continued support i also discovered while i was um at the meeting that they are contemplating not continuing with regents exams they're going to do away with that because the regents exam is just taking one exam does not exemplify what a child knows or their capability what they're going to do though they will get a certificate from new york state and that certificate will have seals to it like
036you have seals off with drama or engineering or something else that the kids are good at so that it can prove to everybody that this child got a new york diploma but also is very good in music he's also very good in science he's also very good in languages so that's what they're planning on doing moving forward and they're also looking at getting rid of the appr oh right because the appr as we know has not achieved one thing in new york state they have said that over the weekend and they are looking to abolish the appr so these are the things that create barriers for kids i also did mention that we should start looking at moving the designation of schools like tsi and csi do we have good schools or do we have
037bad schools no what our schools need is we need help we need technical assistance and they are looking at that as well because all our schools here are good it's just that some needs more help than the others and that's what we should you know concentrated on doing and that's going to be my fight so whenever you see me go to albany it's not my wish but i love i love a good challenge and i love a good fight okay so as i said to you before i'm not a woman of words but i'm a woman of action so i like to act so you can count on me for that the other thing i want to mention too on jennifer lewis on thursday or it's friday friday right right jennifer lewis will be coming
038to mount vernon high school she is definitely going to do her book signing you know who jennifer lewis is the grandmother of hollywood you know if you watch the show blackish she's the grandmother she always play aunt's grandmother on something in in in all her black shows and she will be coming to to to do her book sign and the reason for this is that because i'm promoting literacy we have people who have contributed to buying these books and giving out to our kids so we have asked all the principals to submit names right now we have 300 books that we need to give out to our kids but she will be here and anyone of you want to come out and support her in you know with a book signing and get give her
039kids a book if you want to purchase it please do so but she will be here on friday on saturday is at six o'clock on saturday you had a football game where you have um mont vernon against yonkers and they'll be playing on the memorial field today we had the ribbon cutting and you know that memorial field is has a lot of history with mount vernon um folks and it's so beautiful today it's not real grass it's turf and i made a mistake of wearing my shoes with heel you know after promoting sneakers but anyway today was the day i was supposed to wear my scene because it's okay people didn't even look at my feet they just forget about that because that keeps sinking down in there so i don't realize that obviously but
040anyway i got away with that but it's a beautiful feel and i want everyone to come out with their maroon and gold and and and support our team the young the gentlemen were there today the young men and the players and they make sure i have my gears for saturday so i want you to come out and support them um yonkers already conceded because the superintendent told me he told me because he was at the conference with me when i said we're going to have that game he whispered in my ear and said i know you're going to kick over you know what and i said and i said you are correct and he and and and i said today in my speech over by the the field that yonkers have already conceded um so
041his counselors what his counselor was there because he came and he spoke by the time i get back to my office he texted me that's the superintendent quesada i wonder if he's watching now he texted me and he said oh you should never have said that because i didn't want my team to know that i conceded but but anyway is is is just a back and forth thing you know going on between myself and the other superintendents around we had we have a very good relationship and we're going to make it work and continue that way um i know is there anything i want to say yes so remember we spoke about curriculum mapping many moons ago many months ago and we have we have promised that it's going to be done it's completed and
042i know dr doggett is working on that it's in rubicon atlas but we have dr gail white wallace you know she's an overachiever you know and we started with pre-k and she has completed her curriculum for the pre-k folks and she's going to give each board member a copy of that and she's going to talk about her her pre-k curriculum next time dr doggett will have ela math science social studies coming down the line to give to you so that everybody in the community will have a hard copy not only electronically but have a hard copy of our curriculum so dr white you want to go ahead thank you so much superintendent bennett carl roy good evening to the board my colleagues cabinet sitting here in the front and all of our families that are
043tuning in today so we are continuing with dr bc's highlight on curriculum teaching and learning are one of the pillars of our district this academic year our superintendent has outlined the importance of culturally relevant learning integration of social emotional standards into our learning and taking our concepts and aligning them to the next generation standards with that we're going to start from the bottom up with the babies in the pre-k curriculum as superintendent bc says you always start with thanks so our first slide is every single pre-k teacher because they all worked arduously to make this curriculum what it is to make it engaging to make it inquiry-based to make it see our students reflect our students and address the needs of our students most of all to make them kindergarten ready next slide we have
044a core curriculum it is called develop inspire and grow that we adopted five years ago this curriculum is thematic based themes that are rooted in social studies and the sciences with themes such as at school technology science all around me myself my community and others throughout the themes we tie our mathematical concepts phonemic awareness phonics writing literacy and of course social emotional learning what makes this curriculum special is the review process that we engaged in so there are four board policies in the mount vernon city school district that dictate how we evaluate and implement curriculum the pre-kindergarten department started that process five years ago and decided on dig and the deciding factor was the implementation of the letter people the letter people are puppets that teach students the not only the letter names but the
045letter sounds as well as dr gene's theory of multi-sensory learning for reading this will then travel to our students who are now engaging in foundations which is also a multi-sensory phonetic approach next slide integrated mathematics reading science social studies and social emotional are all in this program as well as formal and informal assessments next slide the team started five years ago and then we moved to make it better in education you never take a textbook and open the teacher's manual and read from it and execute your first year is always an imitation next slide which is what we did in 2018-2019 in 2019 2020 we decided it was time to take the curriculum and add differentiation so board members you are going to see pages of small group instruction activities for students enrichment for students
046and remediation that work was done in twenty nineteen twenty twenty during the third year of implementation we then looked at our ml back then called e l students we added multilingual supports for our students that were ells in our schoology platform every single book title has been translated in spanish for students our teachers ms tirado and miss ashley de leon did a voice over of all the books in spanish so that we are able to play them for the students when needed we also integrated multilingual dictionaries in all classes in the languages of arabic portuguese french french creole spanish and i think that that's it in 2021 2022 we started to shift with the pandemic and answer the call social emotional focused learning was implemented if you look in the first pages of this curriculum
047map you're going to see monthly social emotional themes that were created by our district-wide social workers and we implemented project-based learning at the beginning of each theme you will see science projects that occur each wednesday in our pre-k classrooms and i asked my board members once october comes come visit us you will get to see little four-year-olds in white lab coats executing science experiments and i knew we were doing the right thing last year at graham school and i see my dr hunter mcgregor in the audience when a little four-year-old said mrs amarano that is the control in the experiment and a four-year-old knows the difference between the control and experimental factor in experiment so it's paying off last but not least we now get to 2022 where the teachers created their own units of
048study and we have implemented a research-based social emotional curriculum called second step which you will also find in the curriculum map this curriculum map started at 25 pages and you can see board members we are at almost 200 pages chocked full of activities that teachers can choose from they can execute and they can amend based on the students who sit in front of them what are our next steps according to board policy every five years we must review our curriculum the pre-k department right now is in the curriculum adoption and review process we have two curricula that we are looking at versus dig to make sure that we are providing students with the most appropriate instructional tools last but not least we are going to engage in a five-year longitudinal study to see how our
049five-year implementation has shown growth within our students and how it has affected their performance in kindergarten versus those students who did not attend pre-k the most important are student work our students have only been in school for five full days and i just wanted to show you some pictures of what they're doing our first unit is mo willems this year the the author who's so famous we are teaching students about reading and listening most of all how to be a friend social emotional learning sharing and caring with that we've integrated math ela science and social studies so you can just flip through the pictures so they can see the work that our students have done so here you see sorting and pattern making elephant and piggy are the main characters in mo willem's books some
050bulletin boards next slide once again classroom sorting you see we have students recognizing how to spell their name with the book about their ice cream sharing their ice cream next slide this is the cutest activity that the teachers made the students had to pass the ice cream cone and share it with each other so it was a balanced game gross motor as well as social emotional here you see our teachers and our teaching assistants shout out to williams school the first school i taught in the district miss herbster on the left actually wrote this unit and that's her ta miss hassle next slide here are some of our students in action working on fine motor skills with cutting and painting and coloring they are so engaged keep going our teaching assistant shout out to columbus
051school we have parker there they're working diligently on their projects and their puppets here we have students putting things in order mathematics on our smart board once again we have parker's school there on to the right and look guided writing starting with pictographs in the first week of school mathematics and that's it so i hope you all take the time to really take a look at what our scholars are learning i think my most favorite unit is my community and i want to thank marcy takes our our assistant superintendent of hr for giving me this idea usually the teachers and i drive around and we video places in mount vernon to show the students their community but this year we're making it a trip so miss tiggs had the new teachers take this bus trip
052the children are going to take a bus trip through mount vernon and they're going to stop they're going to go to city hall they're going to go to a firehouse they're going to go to a police station they're going to visit a pizzeria all of the wonderful places in their community so thank you mistakes for the inspiration and thank you everyone for having me i hope to see you again soon and we're going to discuss gifted and talented okay thank you dr giggling [Applause] all right thank you so much i appreciate you and the last thing that i'm going to mention because sometimes you know i have to be transparent i have to give the good and the bad and based on some information i learned from the meeting in saratoga springs i will be
053reviewing our special education structures as we go along because i think we really need to take a look at that so i just want to share that okay and pre-k three come on gail you know you gotta start to a pre-k three this is a good one though let's end with the good big ready big announcement i don't hear it nobody's making any noise [Applause] all right now we're bringing it back everyone pre-game three it's in the house limited availability on our website um chris can you just go back for a second i want everybody to see on our website on the slider there is an icon for pre-k 3 lottery you click right there and you click to enter and you will put your basic information to be entered in our lottery the lottery
054this will close on october 2nd and the lottery will be live from this room on october 14th on live stream so we are looking for all the students in the community who turn three by december 1st december 1st of this year to offer them full day universal pre-k for three-year-olds yes yes how many slots are there and what schools we do not know the locations right now as the rfp is public the rfp is written for a max of between 60 and 75 students yes if we receive less than our total number of seats we will not run the lottery and we will make it public that we will not run the lottery and every student will receive a seat but as per niacid if we have more increase in application than seats we will
055run a live thank you lottery gabriel wallace what is the math 60 to 75 curriculum coming the math or the math that's what that's what dr um doggett is going to work on so the next word for the next one can i make a suggestion yes okay good evening everyone dr dockett for the math curriculum if we could include please financial literacy for high school students middle school too and well we could start in middle school but it's very important that we we include the financial components where our students will learn budgeting invest in personal finance how to balance their checkbooks how to do loans it's very important that we we teach our student um financial literacy so when they go on to college and beyond they would have that knowledge please if you could
056please build that out in our curriculum yeah we need to give them classes like core classes thank you and that ends with the superintendent report thank you dr bc you're welcome thank you dr bc um we're going to let's see what where are we here committee reports okay so i'm just going to start with one i have an email here can you hear me i have an email here from trustee peggy altman she this is a resignation letter i she says that i want to thank you for asking me to join the mount vernon city school district however i have decided for personal reasons that is presented for me from serving in the in the capacity and therefore i resign from what i have seen from the limited time on the board i find the
057team welcoming and eager to make our schools a better place over the next few years i it will accomplish great things i hope to stay in touch and let me know if i can help on any limited basis so the board had um the board collectively had a short list of candidates that we had interviewed prior to miss altman and unanimously we agreed on another candidate that we had interviewed prior to miss altman and now it is our hope that we can appoint her at our next board meeting and okay so that's that for that in the committee report for um our student trustee ray at ray adams uh he was unable to be here tonight because he was going on a school tour but he asked me to find out about the sports bus
058for denzel washington and esteemed students hasn't shown up for the last two days that was monday and tuesday he texted me at 4 45 and he the bus was supposed to be there at 3 45 he texted me at 4 45 to tell me that they had just showed up this was a bus from um first student they came last week but they didn't show up this week can someone find out what happened and are we paying them for those days if we you know please please find out about that is that to take the athletes back and forth just to take the athletes from denzel and esteem to the high school for sports okay all right so do we have any committee reports on that in dr mr gail no not really okay so
059you have a meeting with dr bc scheduled for not yet not yet okay okay and we have a meeting also okay okay so how about you uh christie sorry yeah so as far as the budget committee um trustee gayle and myself met with um mr silver and marlon stevenson where we discussed the budget we discussed the debt services within that budget we had we also trying to study the existing bonds that the school district has and you know how the bond money was spent we also going to study facility and the facilities the school buildings and how monies are spent on the facilities we also going to set up meetings to meet with each department head to go over their budget within that the school budget and we are also putting together a committee so
060we're looking for members of our community who wants to join the budget committee please let us know and that's um that's all that we have we will be meeting every two weeks right trustee gail yes so we will be meeting every two weeks um going forward thank you okay trustee lindsay do you have a committee report i don't have a committee report for the security uh i've been in communication with the uh new security team that's running the ship running the show i know they just switched someone up and got another new person in but they seem to be doing quite well from the website okay so oh okay so i have what about me okay okay trusty white do you have a committee report yes it's not really a committee report but however i
061did visit um rebecca turner the cohort and that's the special ed department there and there were a few complaints and with me came i can't remember dr smith who answered because i knew i would wouldn't be able to answer the questions but dr smith came and we had a nice almost two hours discussing the special ed needs what is needed and their um and their wants and needs and i told them they can put all their needs down because i will try to convince our lovely um mr silva to try to get some of their needs they need things like glue and fabric and things for their kids so but we had a great time there and i heard you were there today no it was nice so okay so i have the special education
062committee but one other thing i wanted to touch on um mr silver as far as security is concerned i i got a call that the ninth graders still don't have their i guess their passes so when they go in the lunchroom it's a line for them to um to get access into the lunchroom so they don't have their passes to get in the security guards are stopping them and it's taking a long time for them to get through okay at the high school i'm sorry i'm out of her in high school i must say though but other than that everything was fine i must say though that at mont vernon high school with the um i know one parent was asking about the um they're not getting calls to say their child is absent that
063scholarship we just started that again because for two years since the pandemic it wasn't working so we just started that and that is up and running with the um with the id they are just working on that because they have some issues with that when it comes to people and the id those who have the um the new id that they used to use they change it up so they are working on that now and i think the principal is having that tomorrow night at the new the orientation for the ninth graders they'll be getting their they'll be in therapy yes okay yes thank you so for specia the special education committee i met with dr smith on monday or tuesday monday about what goals we want to have for our special education meetings going
064forward for the whole year so um before i before i give you the dates and the topics i just want to read something from an employee that works at benjamin turner and she's been an advocate for special ed for quite some time so um you know she and i spoke and she said she spoke to a mary mcnamara of the west chester westchester regional director for scepter because for a while mount vernon didn't have special education pta we only had what we called special education advisory council because the pta for some reason was dismantled for some charter issues many many years ago so so she spoke to mary mcnamara the regional director and uh so the first step is to have an interest meeting so we can have no less than 25 people who are
065interested in joining scepter we will have this interest meeting november 10th at 6 30 at benjamin turner middle school and in the school's media auditorium so i'm asking everybody anybody that's interested in being on the special education um pta please come we need 20 at least 25 people we'll have food right dr bc and so um she also referenced uh joanne colon head of pelham scepter on doing a presentation at that time and she was going to reach out to her as an email so i just want to ask everybody to come and join us november 10th at 6 30 benjamin turner middle school in the media room so um dr smith and i went over the whole year of pta of special education meetings that we want to have and educate some parents so
066the first meeting is going to be october 12th we're going to go over ieps the second meeting is going to be november 16th we're going to talk about guardianship the next meeting is december 7th that's the office of people with disabilities and we're going to talk about access vr that's when students get to be like in high school what their next steps are in january of january the 11th we'll talk about graduation requirements ieps 504s february 8th we're going to have what we're going to have on camp summer school programs what we can give our children march 8th occupational therapy april 12th autism awareness may 10th is going to be speech and on june 7th we're going to celebrate the year so that's all i have for committee meetings and the policy committee is going
067to meet sometime next week i have to get with dr gaviton on that so are we going to read this policy no no no all right so we're going to go on to the meeting i said this is tickled but i don't want water uh let's see we have exactly follow up on old business okay well i think i might have mentioned some stuff didn't i anybody have any old business they need to talk about i like to ask the question to miss tiggs do we have any interviews set up for tas i know a lot of people are complaining that they're short of tas especially i know at rebecca's tournament's cohort they're short t.a that sounds like an hr committee that's what you're doing i just asked some questions so i i would like
068the hr committee i know but when we meet i'll ask them again but since we're asking public right it's okay so i i need to be clear on a few things one is the actual process of hiring but all of the recommendations from administration for teaching assistant hires i have met with those candidates but i met they came in this week or after the resolution for this meeting was established i think at this time maybe there's four but they have met with me in hr and they are in the pre-screening process and they will be on the october 11th agenda the good thing about the next meeting being so far is it is giving the principals and administrators who are interviewing for teaching assistants to get their packets in as of right now um i
069set up a whole day next week hopefully they'll come in in the next day or two and we'll get them on my calendar and hope and get them in next week but the hiring process always begins at a school building so the principal goes on to ola they see the candidates they interview by compact and when they find qualified candidates they send them over to human resources thank you welcome so i so i have a follow-up question so um is it policy or practice um regarding the um certification of any employees how does hr notify or does hr notify the employee of certification if they're going to expire when they're going to expire is that a policy practice or is that something we just do so new york state informs employees that their certification is
070coming to a close we ten we do as a courtesy inform employees so it's a practice it's not a policy it's not a policy it's a practice but the state does it because all of us and self-included must maintain a ballot certification i need to add something about certification on the other side of that is that what i learned this week into is that new york state is looking at certification with for teachers for example if a teacher has a certification in chemistry that person can also teach physics and any other sciences so they are making those adjustments so that teachers will be able to to yes so i just want to add that piece to it and and you know that we always have some issues with cfm i know i mean marcia i've
071spoken to that many times ago so so the career financial management in what happened anybody like any other teacher can teach that class as per new york state it doesn't have to be somebody with with with a license with certified with that so i guess what they're trying to do is to make things easier for uh for the teachers to be able to teach the kids so i just wanted to add to that side of the certification piece right okay okay so you want to do the resolution resolutions human resources resolutions can i have a motion for 5.1 approval of human resources resolution 67a certified dated september 21st 2022 motion okay questions concerns discussions so um so there so uh there are some with an asterisk and uh so that means it's they're going to
072be um subject to completion of pre-employment screenings right so um what happens um if the pre-employment screenings don't if they don't pass so we bring this back and we and we define it it comes back to the board they don't hire them but marxist can speak yeah so we re-send so it's we're approving them at this time pending pre-employment screening however you have seen for different reasons on um board resolutions a recession of an appointment sometimes the employee reasons or the candidate says you know they resend the offer or the acceptance and sometimes it's because they don't clear pre-screening but if we held off on these candidates until october 11 then we would wait another three weeks without the teacher in front of the students some of those pre screening clearing were cleared friday but
073we're not adjusting the resolutions after they're submitted to the board as per your request so we put them there because if i met with the candidate last tuesday i put them on the agenda but on wednesday when i sent the agenda wednesday morning at 8am we didn't have free the pre-employment screening was not yet cleared yeah because you have them starting like today some of them like one of them is starting today the resolution was also done at that time with the anticipation that this meeting was yesterday so um i didn't know of the change at the time that i submitted the resolution [Music] even if they sorry so even with the asterisks and they have not um passed or finalized the background check you still send them up for for approval yes because you
074wanted the resolution a week before with no additional changes this summer we did it because school wasn't starting until september but we wanted to get the board approved and get them going and we had time to rescind before the school year began typically as the school year goes on and the meetings are every two weeks and it's one candidate here or there they don't make it to the resolution but i had the flexibility in the past if you look at a resolution from april to change the resolution after it was submitted so i might submit it on the tuesday before on friday if they didn't clear i would remove them or i wouldn't even put them there and when i got the clearance on friday i would just say to bc in may i said
075do you mind if i add this candidate who i just got back the pre-screening clearance and she would say okay and so they were added at a later time but it's my understanding that is now the board's preference that resolutions not be touched so to front load right instead of adding later so this gives you the opportunity to look at what the public can't see at this time but in the background you have all of the resumes and who's that on the compact so you can see all of that information and review it so it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it and i throw it in on friday at two o'clock okay so is there a difference between the double asterisk or the single asterisk
076oh because there's someone to have double that's the same thing though i'm just i just thought i okay all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries can i have a motion for 5.2 approval of human resources resolution 67b non-certified dated september 21st 2022 sounds like you guys sound excited okay any questions questions concerns comments i guess not okay all those in favor i oppose abstain motion carries can i have a motion for 6.1 appointment of technology links for the 2022-2023 school year motion okay second who's that okay questions concerns discussion all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries tampa motion for 6.2 authorization to hire staff for sundown program second questions concerns discussions all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries okay have a motion for school improvement 7.1 authorization to approve
077school school improvement service memorandum s 23-5 dated september 20th 2022. yeah motion second need a sec the second second yes i have a question questions concerns discussions go ahead so i have a i have a question um on this for the school improvement so it says that it's with um justin inspire inc i see a list i just seen a sum amount there's no breakdown it says they're going to provide data management at the various schools what a what okay just inspired do we have a 2022 2023 um agreement with this company what is this company who is this company i don't know this company i'm sorry yes this company it's a five-year agreement they are free and for five years these are grants that we have to do every year so that's why they
078are there okay so what's the data what what's including data management they provide somebody in the school to have the teachers to get the principal to look at the data with the data team in there so is that something our technology department can do instead of instead of um so we're going to hire somebody to do this we have been doing it for the past couple of years yeah but is that something that we can have and the grant has been approved for that so we have to continue with it until the grand end when the grant ends we can always revisit it when the when a grant ends yes okay so each grant for each school is 25 000 is that's what it is okay i also have it says um for family workshops
079he also says for pre-k professional development for pre-k 333 thousand dollars all that uh all that is great so who who is going to do um the professional development they have their own people they have their own folks from outside that comes in and work with dr um gail wright wallace and sometimes dr d white wallace you know aids them with that and when it comes to the the workshops the ropes up would be like um on the the training for we call it the the health training that many people like the um the cpr the cpr trainings that they do along with computer trainings how to use a computer and all of that a wide number of trainings that they do the trainings for who parents okay so is there itemized breakdown on this
080or is because we're just having the sum amount like the the the services that can be rendered like for instance it says here but i can't no i can't i can provide you with that to be honest with you but what happened we provide the state because the state is the one who do their audits on all these grants so just for you guys to approve it that's it but the state already approved it and said that this has to happen so even with the yoga it says the yoga um instructor at um at steam school for 75 000 for 18 sessions for two certified teachers that for 18 sessions for two certified teachers that mean each teacher is going to make two thousand dollars each is it an hour half hour how are they
081being taught well why is it so well it's it's not only during the course of the week it's also on weekends as well so it's 18 sessions right so it can be on weekends and it can be in the week but that's what the state approved for them to do so do you i think she's i think she probably wants um a breakdown of the services but i will i ca i can give you that yeah that's what we sent to the state they do their own audit okay so we can show you is nothing that we can do about it once they approve it yeah i think um for for for yoga's instructor especially making um two thousand four thousand dollars per half hour per hour is astronomical i mean okay remember we don't
082pay our grant writers our grand riders get paid from the rfp that they get i know but we probably could use that money for something else in the district but in the grant i mean they won't get you can't you can't use somebody else in the district to do that if it's during the course of the day from eight to four was um i think was and the other thing i think she spoke about did she was this a bid was there a bid on this yes there was an rfp that goes out then they won the rfp was that from five years ago two years ago years ago two years ago so they have like another two years on their country okay so if you could just get a breakdown please as opposed to
083the the um yeah some amount i can't give you what we give the state okay great thank you so could we pull this aside or see if she wants to pull it we'll pull this aside or we're going to approve it what are we going to do so we're going to prove it it's a great oh it's a question okay yeah [Laughter] okay i have it just one question now just inspired there's a lot of stuff here so i mean who are they they are grant writers that the board hired many years ago of course if you can if you want to yeah yeah you can i'd set it up at least let's inspire susan that's so highly interact with my friend okay i have a question about that what is the um culture and
084proposal for for our lady of victory well our lady of victory money is through title one okay and we have to to um to communicate with them so their type one money that we give them they tell us what they want to do with it and then we pay them so that's what we do with with them lady of victory we have to do that that's also from the states so was it is it to just inspire um i i have two things on my there's a lot of things i didn't do over the years i have two here is this is this right i think it's a duplicate this duplicate she wants to pull it to further notice you want to pull it can't pull the prints we're going to lose it you can't
085do that where's the deadline now you're gonna have to start what you can do you can review it and see and moving forward next year you can say no before it's before the deadline so we get yeah this is for this year you have to if you want to do that you have to do that for next year okay so if you could also get the breakdown in the meantime you can't come anytime and look at it okay i think that's the only thing that has been audited here so far look at the state every six months okay all right very well all those in favor aye oppose abstain two abstentions too obscene three one two three four did it carry bad you abstained did i oh okay walk up stained yes mark of state
086yeah exactly i'm abstaining i want to make sure that uh she gets what she wants i'm gonna abstain so so tomorrow she's we're gonna come meet with her i guess abstaining okay motion carries all right so i'll show you show us tomorrow okay thank you and i have a motion for student services 8.1 approval of student service pupil personnel services memorandum number zero five dated september 20th 2022. who's that red yes what i'm trying to tell you can i have a second second questions concerns discussion i'm just just questioning that's a lot of money so i'm just curious dr smith can explain it on this on this resolution students attend various programs and as a result we we have to pay it so we have students in those programs and we pay for it so
087it's special ed students and it's very expensive what were your what was your question okay all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries i have a motion in the business office or authorization to pay staff for bus action bus duty motion questions concerns discussions i have a concern but i think i've spoken on this topic for since i've been here so it's not new about the bus duty and the amount of payments being paid to different people i know we need bus duty people but i i just have a problem with the money well this is i believe this um they explained that this was part of the negotiations i think that the next negotiation we need to um they need to discuss i never heard of negotiating for bus duty but i will
088check no teaching negotiations i've never heard of the budget well depending on i think this is the the amount of money they get it depends on their salary right that's what happens the contractual salary yes but if i'm a teacher and i'm teaching i'm going into class to teach and you're putting kids on the bus and we're getting the same pay i have a problem with that i've always had a problem with that not just today not i've had a problem way back when and it still hasn't changed so i know we had talked about last year to look into it to make a um maybe a flat rate or um so i think maybe that's something that we can review yeah we can review for next year yes i make a note of that
089okay all those in favor opposed um me abstain staying here motion carries i have a motion for 9.2 authorization authorization for emergency fire escape repairs and replacement motion second questions concerns discussion we have an idea of the cost of the emergency but i see today after the emergency it's going to cost about 200 thousand dollars i believe i'm reading we have an idea with the quest just to do the repair this year so we anticipate the repairs to be in excess of two hundred thousand dollars these are repairs that um we need to do now and we'll be finished shortly and we will be fine as soon as this is finished i saw the pictures i mean i have a question um you mentioned at one point that um we don't have to go out
090to bid if it's an emergency that's correct okay um is that something uh do we have something from the state that says that and that is that is a state education department rule is there that's the board is there like a bidding uh or who how do we pick the contract or whomever we're going to use to do whatever emergency repair this is through a bid a bid through the state this this is through the office of government services through the state and this is something called ed data which is where we get a number of our contractors this particular contractor senko metals from parsippany new jersey will is is doing and will be doing these and we have talked to other people who are local who do certain things like welding which is one
091of the big things here and i uh i did speak to everybody on the ed data bid who is specific for welding and none of them are interested in doing fire escapes this is a very specific trade uh with very specific requirements for this work uh so there's a plumbing company that is on the state bid to do welding but we can't let them do things like fire escapes this is very specific work that that they're doing so in the future can you attach that data backup for on the resolutions sure okay of course the the state bid number is on that resolution as well [Music] all those in favor aye aye opposed abstain motion carries have a motion for 9.3 accept a donation for rebecca turner elementary school motion second okay questions concerns discussions
092my question is we got this from how did probably decide to accept it or not i wasn't there this happened in the summer time this program was already incorporated in mount vernon in high school and these are mount vernon high school students so that program is already run through in mount vernon in the district so the students came in and did a program and taught the students actually for the day in the summer time for the summer program and the summer program that company actually donated backpacks to the school that day just as a gift so we held they held them that day until we had the students don't have the backpacks until the resolution goes forward but there's nothing that they want this is already they're already working for um the district work with
093the district yes i guess was a company that they partnered partnership with the district so they're already here but they wanted to give the students an elementary school a gift [Music] it's not cash no it's not two thousand dollars eighty it's eighty back school backpacks valued at two thousand dollars donation valued at two thousand all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries okay okay on the board of education can i have a motion for 12.1 policy uh first reading 2022 2023 social media and digital communication policy for staff motion second thank you okay i'm going to read the social media and digital communication policy for staff number 6561 the school district recognizes the values associated with using social media as a communication and learning tool the purpose of these guidelines is to establish best practices
094for district employees regarding the appropriate use of social media tools in their professional lives social media includes any and all forms of online publication where individuals engage in conversation or posting of written or image information such as blogs wikis podcasts virtual worlds messaging sites and social networks some of the more familiar social media tools includes such online services as twitter facebook youtube wikipedia instagram pinterest snapchat yik yak and linkedin this list is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive new social media platforms are continuous continually introduced to the marketplace the same set of professional expectation applies regardless of the choice of social media hey dr doggett i'm going to make a motion that we accept this um policy and the rest of it's online so the people the viewers can see the rest of it online
095okay okay so can i make a motion to adopt a policy a wave the rest of the reading motion second second second second okay and the same thing for this second policy safety policy which is the safety problem 12.2 which is the safety policy yes i have a motion for 12.2 adoption of the 2022-2023 district-wide safety plan okay do i need a motion on that motion the first and second second oval okay questions concerns discussions all those in favor aye aye opposed abstain okay motion carries thank you and then that's it so we'll be going into executive session for the purposes of can just one thing you may you you made the motion to wave the reading but we didn't make a motion to approve i didn't hear we made the motion to waive the
096reading but we didn't approve it i can't okay so a motion to approve it you have to make motion to make a motion to approve the social media and digital communication policy staff 6561 thank you welcome all in favor aye aye thank you you're welcome okay so we're gonna go into executive session for the purposes of for personal reasons executive session for personal reasons motion i make a motion to go into executive session all those in favor aye will we be coming back opposed we will not be coming back abstain okay motion carries i think they want to abstain everyone have a good night you