001[Music] good evening good evening i'd like to call this july 6 2022 annual organizational meeting of the mount vernon board of education to order please stand for the pledge 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 first order of business is to swear in our new superintendent dr bennett conroy our new trustees starting with trustee saunders followed by trustee kerwin trustee lindsay and our student trustee adam do we need to stand too mine no bible or like a dr seuss book right raise your right hand repeat after me that i will support the constitution of the united states of america and the constitution of the state of new york and i will be faithfully discharged the duties of
002the office of the superintendent of school according to the best of my ability [Applause] foreign i adrian saunders do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of office of school board trustee according to the best of my ability [Music] [Applause] do solemnly swear that i would support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the office of school board trustee according to the best of my ability [Music] [Applause] you're doing a great job thank you thanks i'm mark lindsey i'm mark do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of
003new york and i will faithfully discharge the duties of office of school board trustee according to the best of liabilities [Applause] is that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of office of student trustee according to the best of my abilities [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh our next order of business this evening is the nomination of school board president and vice president for the 2022-2023 school year at this time i will open the floor for nominations for president of the school board i'm sorry before we continue people are saying on facebook live that the volume is too low and they are they are hardly able to hear what's going on to nominate someone from a board president
004okay do i have a second for that motion any other nominations for school board president i'm gonna need dorsey [Laughter] my apology um just a question please then not to just the point of clarification can a person run consecutively two years yes is there a policy on that so we have a possum so what this what does that mean what does that mean i'm gonna take the vote okay on the motion to elect adrian saunders as president of the board of trustees i have a motion from jeff fred seconded by mark lindsey all those in favor any opposed abstentions abstain ocean carries do i have oh i'll now open the floor for nominations of school board vice president for the 2022-2020 school year i nominate wanda white any questions comments or concerns are there any
005other nominations any other nominations all in favor aye aye any opposed hi abstentions staying motion carries i'll start with you right the oval office second oath of office uh [Music] that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of office of school board president according to the best of my ability [Applause] i that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and i will faithfully discharge the duties of officer school board vice president according to the best of my ability [Applause] [Music] so we have a consent agenda tonight for the reorg and now's the opportunity for board members to remove any item from the consent agenda appointment
006of officers can i please have a motion and a second to approve annual appointment of officers motion any questions comments or concerns all in favor aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion a second to approve annual appointments motion second any questions comments or concerns all in favor hi any opposed abstentions ocean carries and please have an um a motion and a second to approve annual designations motion second any questions comments or concerns all in favor any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion in a second to approve annual authorizations motion second authorization any questions comments or concerns all in favor aye aye any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion in a second to approve faithful performance blanket bond for all persons or positions
007required by law are regulated to be bonded second second any questions comments or concerns all in favor any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion in a second to approve annual resolutions 10.2 through 10.9 motion any questions comments or concerns i have one question um mr silver the uh student accent insurance coverage is that a new is that a new provider or have we been using them in the past we've been using pupil benefits for maybe 15 years okay i'll show you this out more any questions comments or concerns all in favor aye any opposed 45 minutes abstentions our district clerk to please tell me what did i abstain from because i may change my vote since i was having issues with my laptop my my um tablet and i wasn't able
008to see what we were talking about so i thought it was something else annual appointment of officers okay yeah i did not abstain on that i'm sorry my apologies that's a yes to me hmm no that was it agenda you sure you want to go on too excited you want to go into exact now can i have a motion in a second to enter into executive session to discuss the employment history of a particular person or persons motion all in favor hi can you tell us how long 45 minutes 45 minutes and then we'll come back and do the regular agenda [Music] motion second second one second you have to make sure no you got cooties [Applause] [Music] um the mount vernon board of education recognizes the critical importance of community discourse and involvement in
009the education of mount vernon's children and accordingly 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 advance by no later than 4 pm the day of the meeting by contacting the district clerk in person by phone or by email the board welcome welcomes all respectful comment with appraiser criticism however identifying and criticizing a specific student parent teacher administrator or other mount vernon education official or employee is strictly prohibited any such complaint must be presented and addressed with the proper administrative channels each speaker is allowed three minutes to speak up to one additional 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
010at the direction of the superintendent may immediately respond to a speaker's remarks our first speaker tonight is tom keller good evening a few things on the budget and related matters uh congratulations congratulations to the new trustees adrian saunders lorna kerwin mark lindsey melissa munoz but she didn't follow up condolences as those that didn't make it better like next year as i mentioned before i think we're going to have a real loss on the budget committee with melissa not being honest she's got a couple of months to decide whether she wants to be on as a member of the public and then since the last meeting i got a resignation letter from rick powers rick's probably the most important person on the budget committee he spent an incredible amount of time over the last eight years
011one of the projects was looking at mount vernon yonkers new rochelle white plains and coming up with the proof that we have a lot of overhead infrastructure older schools staff by people obviously and this is something we have to reckon with i mentioned maybe a school like williams has to be closed or some other school park or i don't know you get one of these schools one of the tournament schools it's got 200 people in it and it probably holds four five six hundred some of the other schools uh have more capacity as well including the high school so i would hope that rick powers would um change his mind and come back in the fall otherwise we need some new people on the budget committee to help out right now i'm the only public
012member i read the um excuse me i'm recovering from covert my kids gave it to me um i was on the website and uh i saw a number of people graduated from the different schools montfort high school 213 davis 114 denzel washington 54. that's 3.81 i don't have the beds numbers mr silva probably has them the beds numbers as of october 1st how many started the senior year and we know how many graduated 381 and how many started three or four years ago as freshmen and the percentage we have 381 graduating it seems it seems a little low because i thought one of the things that's happened on the superintendent hamilton was that we were graduating more there were fewer dropouts in the 11th and 12th gray and and so forth but from these numbers
013it would it wouldn't seem to be the case i think we have to look into these and you know and find out what the percentage is especially when i read in the journal news about yonkers having some 90 graduation rate now also of these 381 how many were regents diplomas and how many were local diplomats because there's a difference and one one of the reasons why we were graduating more people i think was because there were local departments i never got an answer for hamilton on this down at the graham school a number of years ago when i brought it up boy one minute left said it all right let's see okay i want to meet the new facilities manager replace mike pelicio i mean we still have this pothole out here coming into the
014parking lot which is a disgrace come on let's fix it i live near the high school there's a number of potholes in the high school on the gym side the parking lot of the gymnasium side and we need to plant a few more trees there i don't know it's exhaust from cars that destroy the trees but there's two or three trees that you know disappeared and another thing is the athletic fields should be open to the public tennis track other things and they're not i was over there on tuesday both gates are locked we need to address this people are paying tax money we should be able to use the facility when it's not in use by the students all right thank you our next speaker is greg bonaparte same [Music] i'm almost scared to
015get over here right now so there's been a lot going around in the internet i just want to address some of the issues there was a verbal assault on may 17th i was going to get into it but i don't want to get into it but i would ask just for clarity anyone who was perpetrated or felt they were hurt could you let the public know what happened it's all i asked because if it comes to me oh it didn't happen it didn't happen please be transparent let the public know what happened um last year i sent dozens of emails to the superintendent and board they were from desperate parents whose concerns were not being addressed i sent videos of fights at the high school and the warning someone is going to get killed too
016many i feel did not care someone was killed and many more kids are petrified just to go to school services were not given to students bullying was rampant uneducated former students are now on the streets with nothing to do now resort to crime high taxes have contributed to driving the elite elderly and financially strapped into foreclosures when warnings are given to me to anyone else but to me because they've some people in the public field that the district is not listening and the community is not being served i will continue to make those issues public now there are questions about my the validity of so many things that i put out regarding statements of a board member so if the board is interested in it i ran out of paper i have 20 some odd
017sheets of texas one saying please delete our conversation i might be in violations of some rules here the board wants them they're here i stand by my statements in the past our tax dollars were not spent wisely money is missing money has been misappropriated and if ordered so in the works we will soon find out that the district has not met the needs of the students and taxpayers so if i'm wrong in the future we'll see but i stand by that um i will say since madam superintendent has taken the helm i have not received one complaint from anyone one minute who did not have their concerns addressed so i think that that's a good start we should address the community and we should be transparent thank you the volume is still on low on
018facebook live they can't hear anything our next speaker is axel ebermann [Music] good evening dear trust is the members of the public first i want to welcome the new board members and comment every single one of you for not only running for public office but also serving in a volunteer capacity i think that needs to be pointed out once in a while you guys are not being paid for this you're doing this as a service to the community um it is not an easy task and you sometimes get more than you bargained for which leads me to my next point there have been two recent resignations of board members and rumors of a third resignation all connected to the toxic and hostile atmosphere that seems to have enveloped this body we don't necessarily control our
019spouses and sometimes we don't even see eye to eye with them my wife can certainly attest to that however family members of board members are publishing slanderous hit pieces on other sitting board members it is certainly not helping to create a productive and amicable atmosphere if there is alleged misconduct by a member of this board as alleged by the prior speaker this board should deal with it following its bylaws ideally an executive session behind closed doors for the sake of my words children and for the sake of the greater community i want to urge you to lead by example also when it comes to public discourse thank you our next speaker is mark stuckey you kidding me oh my god good evening everyone good evening um once again my name is mark stuckey i'm here
020to speak directly to our superintendent dr conroy you are taking a position that's going to have a lot of weight and you know this think the heavens that we went out of the school year with not one incident one what one incident nothing went wrong the closing of the year went beautiful this year you're gonna have friends who say that your friends who sits on the left and the right side of you who are going to wind up throwing chaos into the source just try to discredit you you and i have come a long way and we have been around and we have worked with each other i do know that you have a good heart for the city of mount vernon educational system whatever you do you do it straight open you have haters
021that will hate you stay focused watch your back as they say in the military watch your sex don't let no one change your mind please use here as our interim two times when i was here not too long ago and now you are the superintendent something that is very well past due things has been taking place behind the doors that no one would ever see that you have done you have those who will talk about you saying that you have not done anything but you have propped up pushed up and made everyone in front of you wind up looking good now show what has been do what you've been doing behind those doors you have always had an open door policy as i know of you have always been transparent as i know of continues
022to stay focused i know people will say oh he's going to get her real good i have no problems with you if i was to set on this board you know i will give you 400 and i will cover your back at all costs when i say i am your friend i am your friend people will have to step in between me in order to get to you that's how much i have your back i will not come to this podium to say anything wrong unless i come to you first to check it behind a closed door we must stop doing things in the public's eye as far as fighting each other other districts are looking at us and higher up they're looking at us and constantly talking about us in order to make a
023change we have to start here to make that change if i want to beat you up it's time for us to beat you up for me to beat you up behind that closed door first and we should be able to come to some kind of agreement then let's stop fighting each other because nothing will be accomplished two things one thing left taxes are always going to go up no matter where you go where you live taxes are going to go up it's up to you the board members to stabilize it to help the residents of mount vernon bring the residents and and to be a part of it yes kylo ren is saying he's the only person who sits on the budget committee well then colored bring some people in bring it to the hook
024please please bring some people in and we can wind up doing something different here mount break we can do something different it's a new time kovic have changed everything for us so let's change thank you [Applause] our next speaker is john gallagher [Laughter] talk about a dangerous job good evening i'll take my mask my name is john gallagher it's been quite some time since i've addressed you as a board some new members are on there and i would say congratulations to the two new board members warner and mark congratulations to the previous board member who won re-election adrian and congratulations to our new superintendent uh who i've talked to before in the past i would say congratulations to ken silver but he's been here for a while and he knows where i stand on the
025budget i'm not going to talk about the budget tonight so if anybody's worried about me with fire and brimstone tonight i'm not in that mood tonight i didn't know what mood i'd be in i wasn't in a happy mood early and then i decided to sign up to speak but i want to talk about tonight is a couple of things first thing i want to talk about is as a school board what your responsibilities are you are like the board of directors in a corporation you are the ones who give the set policy give orders to the ceo who happens to be the superintendent it's not reversed as it has been in years past uh it shouldn't be the tail wagging the door and that's what i've seen happen before you set the policies you
026look at what's going on and you follow up on it that's exactly what i expect you to do most of you people that are sitting on the board up there i help put on except for one uh i work for them in their campaign and i expected things to be done which i wanted to see the better the school district school district should be about educating our children the best way we possibly can at the lowest cost to taxpayers dollars okay we cannot afford it people were concerned to me and said to me john it's only a half percent uh tax increase i said no it's more than that because uh the assessed values in mount vernon have been going down i pointed out out to mr silver and other people that are aware of
027it because i get involved with city budgets and county budgets too and i said in addition to that uh the assess besides the assessed values going down you also have to look at the star program it's been reduced so that means you're going to pay more taxes people that are getting the store and enhanced off that we're getting three 3 000 or 4 000 off their tax assessment aren't getting that anymore so that means your tax is going to go up because other people aren't paying it in addition to that we were hit with a you know five five percent county tax increase uh five percent they tried on the library and people just fed up it turns out that it came to a budget vote and you are the only uh municipality or entity
028besides the library that allows that to happen so the reason why i bring all this about is because about 10 years ago not maybe 12 years ago my organization concerned property and was in mount vernon we were fed up what was going on in this school district there was a new faction that had taken over for many years our schools weren't getting any better years before that when another faction had it they weren't doing very well either so what we decided to do as a group the north side the south side the east side and the west side came together as a group and middle mount vernon educators some city people some school officials some pride teachers to try to change our school district and that's what we did ten years ago we put a
029platform out here which i have in front of me which goes back to 2012 where we asked certain things to be due to be done there was one person on the board who ran for reelection again this year and she was part of that original group and i will say with confidence she's a friend of mine so let the public know she is a friend of mine but this woman actually implemented with the rest of our school people some of the stuff you're seeing the benefits in the school district today for example k to eight catered to uh uh high school to 12 years in a steam academy vocational programs we hired a superintendent which didn't turn out the way yes your time is up which i'll wrap up in a second which didn't turn
030out the way we thought it would however we got it we seems to we got a new superintendent and let it be i hear you dear thank you uh thank you for your time i will continue this later on thank you our next speaker is cynthia turn quest jones it's off good night everyone my name is cynthia turner quest jones i reside at 444 seneca avenue mount vernon new york and as for conversation with dr bennett conroy i promised her that i will continue as an educator in the community as well as in the school district so edward williams elementary school is located on nine union lane in mount vernon new york i made many visits to edward williams and found that their reading program is up and running with v interventions being championed now
031accompanied with the new curriculum that's going to be resuscitated i am excited to see them go from good to great revitalizing the school library and other libraries in mount vernon city school district will continue to be my charge edward williams library currently have eleven thousand four hundred and forty five books in their collection the shelves are overstuffed which results in books being lost this requires the librarian to actually go shelf by shelf and book by book i have a crew who is willing to be a part of revitalizing the edward williams school library the principal and librarian cannot carry the task by themselves the average age of a book at edward williams school library is 1998 which is 22 years of age fiction books around 17 years old non-fiction books are around seven years old
032the life of a non-fiction book should be the life of the president of the united states tenure the last time edward williams school made an order with tidal wave was 2019 i am not sure about the volume of books that were ordered that time any book before 2011 needs to be looked at because that is a ten of a year of publication the current climate is not reflected in books that are 10 years old unless it's a classic piece like winnie the pooh when books are not weeded the shelves are then inaccurate there are currently collections erected since george floyd murder in 2020 these collections address the following diversity equity and inclusion plus social and emotional topics which came up during the height of covet the importance of teaching our young students to care about
033learning has been lost for quite some time at this time we have the opportunity to create and transform if we do not create the future of the new library the direct impact will be detrimental to our children here in mount vernon a library that represents the 21st school library is at steam high school jeff brett and i visited it there the question is do our books meet the needs and demands of the library's community of users the answer is we will make sure that it does i'm looking forward with continuing the action of revitalizing the edward williams school library and other school libraries across mount vernon public school my name is cynthia turques jones i live at 444 seneca avenue my run in new york [Applause] our next speaker is damaris monet [Music] good evening
034everybody my name is damaris monet i'd like to congratulate the new board of trustee i mean new trustees as well as welcome back uh superintendent appreciate it you were around when my daughter was in elementary school my daughter just turned 20 on july 4th as i mentioned my name is damaris monet i reside at 346 south 4th avenue i've been a resident of mount vernon for 20 years i formerly worked for the new york state senate representing parts of mount vernon in the bronx and for a brief period i served as a special assistant for former mayor wallace i run for office in mount vernon and i am a newly elected district leader i am very familiar with the mount vernon power players the heads of warring factions and who benefits the most from the
035city's dysfunction if it's not the students teachers or the overly taxed pa paying property owners i have been privy to the complaints and problems that have vexed mount vernon for decades for over a decade while working with the new york state leadership i have been asked countless times to speak upon issues of concern with the city of mount vernon such as why is mount vernon one of the most one of new york state's most expensive school districts with the poorest results i've been asked about our controllers i've been asked about our mayors and i've been asked about why our city has such low voter turnout i'm here today because and quite honestly this is my first time being in front of the school board even though my both my children are now grown i'm here
036today because i've recently been reading articles that keep going back and forth and i am very concerned about it because quite honestly i'm tired of the reputation that comes before us and it seems to continue because people like to play games in public i'm concerned about the family trajectory of the school board their inability to lower cost improving learning and graduation rates stopping violence and murderous intents the articles that highlight that this board is ineffective and would rather work at a game of gotcha but instead of focusing on how to better improve mount vernon and our reputation this board would rather engage in serious allegations threats of employment and the division of our people by race serious accusations have been made publicly but without public evidence are we to believe that the one soul latina
037duly elected who's been in office for less than two years is responsible for the school board's dysfunction and the mismanagement of the entire school budget the following members have been in office and are responsible for the discretion of our school system andre and saunders you've been in office for nine years praying for using names darcy well there are board members right darcy miller has been in office for six years wanda white has been in office for six years jeffery is in office for two years candace sorenson for a year and a half before this board continues making a mockery of our city the system and public trust i truly have to ask who's really the head honcho in charge and why is the school system leaving money talent and students where is the return of
038our investment maybe this board should focus more on implementing solutions to better educate and prepare our students for a more equitable future instead of pettiness and waging war on fellow members to disparage i would suggest starting with the school board's website and knowing how to spell government which is on our front page and it's really kind of embarrassing that on our front page of our school district's um website it doesn't even spell government properly so i'd appreciate it if our board can get together to work in the best interests of the city and not personal interests of each individual thank you very much [Applause] okay good evening everyone good evening good evening everyone good evening a couple months ago we had a discussion on the gifted and talented students we had several meetings about how
039we are going to address the issues and concerns that surrounded that program so tonight we have dr gail wallis white who is going to present to us on the changes and what we have made of it and i hope you will enjoy what she's going to present because she worked very hard on making those changes necessary so with further ideal dr gayle wallis you have the floor good evening everyone special good evening to the community congratulations dr bennett conroy congratulations to all the new members of the board and the returnees and it's always wonderful to see my colleagues here in the front so thank you dr benecaro for the introduction today is the beginning of a new season and they talk a lot about seasons so the administration that are currently sitting on our dais
040my colleagues on the superintendent's cabinet we've all spoken and talked about what it is that our community needs that discussion we have pledged to be as transparent as possible and what does transparency mean it means being clear about our goals our mission and what things that we are dedicated to doing and in the words of dr bennett conroy we are dedicated to students success student safety and the balance in students social emotional well-being so today begins a new tradition for the mount vernon city school district celebrating and highlighting students from now on during each board meeting we are going to talk about why we're here teaching learning and our children so i am honored to be able to be the first person to present this type of engaging discussion we're going to talk about a
041program that was started simultaneously with the 2020 vision the atlas program some may call it the gifted and talented program which was started with the founder dr evelyn collins who is now at the steam school next slide the program has been existence for about seven six to seven years starting from grassroots providing students with pull-out services above and beyond their core academic time i'm here to talk to you tonight about what updates have been made in october i was given the assignment to begin working with this esteemed group of teachers so here are our updates for 2021 2022 when last we discussed we began in our admission season i am proud to report we had a successful admission season from january to may of this academic year we were able to upgrade our testing for
042students to the raven color-coded matrices 2. this assessment and screener was chosen because it is non-verbal allowing us to capture more students with ieps as well as students that have been classified enl we are very happy with the results students received the assessment well and they actually reported to us that they enjoyed taking it whoever thought about that right children enjoyed taking an assessment next slide so here are some numbers to help you understand where we are our current program screen students in the second grade based on empirical data and studies that students iqs are become steady around the age of eight our entrance is second grade where you see we have our largest group of tested students at 507 we also test all students in grades three through six who have registered for school
043during this 2021-2022 academic year that's to ensure that no student is left behind and they're not allowed to be screened for the program so your numbers in front being transparent as we talked about we have 619 students that did not meet the cutoff and we had 85 students out of the 704 who were tested that were admitted into the program there will be a small number of students who are tested in september and those will be the students who were registered in the middle of april to the end of june of this academic year so these numbers will fluctuate by october 1st next slide so what we have in front of you are the student admit breakdowns by school just so you understand the middle school students get all of the fifth grade students that
044are admitted to that school for dwsa and benjamin turner school this is a breakdown of the students who have been admitted to the program these students received a lot of notification as well as those students who did not meet the cutoff all parents were required to sign a permission slip that their child could participate in the pull out program which does not occur during course subjects they were given their certificate and of course they were given an invitation for a celebration because we like to celebrate in the mount vernon city school district next slide our total projected enrollment at this time for the 2022-2020 year 235 students across 14 school buildings those buildings that are not captured are students in grades 8 through 12 because they are beginning their ap and regions prep and they
045are provided with their supplement at those times next slide welcome to our students on the day that noah and his ark visited mount vernon y'all remember that day june 2nd was anybody trying to drive through the street said that i thought my car was gonna get whisked away although noah and his art came to visit us we still had almost 160 people come to our welcome event that night the parents were excited so during this event next slide we discussed with them what is atlas the assessment the test and you see the families lines up they are signing in their meeting of their teachers they were given dinner of course and we celebrated our students and we celebrated our parents next slide you can see the mount vernon high school cafeteria was filled we did
046practice some social distancing and there's the staff welcoming on the new students we were very excited to offer in a raffle and you'll see the students on standing up front next slide we were able to offer the students in the bottom left scholarships to the pelham art center over the summer we will provide continuous scholarships to the pelham arts center and other special activities for students throughout the year the pelham arts center has dedicated scholarships to mount vernon city school district and we are going to have a benefit in march of 2023 to continue the support in this work so we wanted to let you in on some of the magic right taylor so one thing i like to tell people is i love fancy and cute and atlas has swag so we are giving
047everybody on the dais board members swag bags that the students who started an atlas received that night so you can see what they received to begin their journey in the atlas program all students received a swag bag and they were challenged to begin to think about how they are going to engage in the program in the fall next slide they're the list of the students that showed up aren't they so cute nobody's making noise for the students nobody's clapping for the students i'm sorry [Applause] they were all very excited and they felt very special last but not least last slide the discussion about changes and enhancements to the program so after a few meetings and discussions we talked about how are we going to enhance this particular program the first is revamping and you guys
048will see some resolutions and work about this integrated standards-based curriculum this is when i get to harass my colleague and my old high school buddy dr doggett as we talk about aligning the atlas program with the standards for non-fiction text and reading focusing on hard skills of research and writing that will connect to the core instruction on each individual grade level this second we will be purchasing culturally relevant biography studies for the students to study people who have created seminal work in the areas of astronomy biology environmental sciences as well as in the arts we also have our new text libraries to support our research work in these areas and last but not least mentorship opportunities and i'm so glad for our student member who's on the dais today our student board member because one
049of the mentorship opportunities will be with steem high school students that are working on special programs to mentor some of the students in the atlas programs for their year-long projects we are building in thank you for the support of our budget of robotics and coding saturday boot camps that will happen quarterly for all students as well as theme-based academic trips and our continued partnership with the pelham art center these are some of the changes and enhancements that we are projecting and planning for the 2022-2023 academic year last but not least there are no slides for this one tail are you ready we are sharing our work from this academic year for the first time ever we have created a live action end of the year final project journal of all of the work of the
050students in our program in the program you're going to see a qr code by each student's face you can scan the qr code and you will see their live demonstration and presentation of their ends of the academic year projects there's also some highlights of our staff members little buyers of them and most importantly our seniors did some writing and reflection on their time all of the seventh graders that are enrolled wrote about the impact of the program what it meant to them and how it's going to help them be successful throughout their academic year and i know somebody's going to ask the question where the qr codes for home school home school right now there's a vacancy and they were unable to complete an end of the year project but we are going to work
051with them on a special project in september and that is the conclusion of our first student centered academic centered presentation for this board meeting are there any questions from the board oh you know i'm coming come on baby i'm ready you know i'm coming um so first of all oh my god like it sounds terrific sounds wonderful um i'm really excited to see the essays you know and i'm really excited to see the robotics and all that stuff because in my house that's what we do you know um you say we have 235 students right and we have the high school and i'm going to ask you the same you know because i know that you guys are revamping this the question is how many schools have um um allocated classrooms and you know like
052pennington that he has its own classroom and has his own teacher how many of our the 14 schools have the same thing as pennington so teacher allocation is by enrollment okay so it can change every year so my job this summer will be a look at allocation based on scheduling if there is a need for one teacher to be in that building all day long then they will receive one feature so it's all based on scheduling so right now it's looking like pendington um lincoln will need its own teacher possibly traphagen we have a lot of kids this year at um between graham and park um grimes and parker homeschool also so we're going to look at numbers and schedules but do remember trustee sorenson if you want to give me a teacher for every
053burger i would love to hate you we're trying to be as fiscally responsible as possible and make sure that we schedule based on student enrollment in need wonderful um and then the other thing that i want to ask is can non-atlas students engage in this amazing robotics program so uh we are going to have two types of programs right so we're going to have some atlas only programs on the weekends and then we're also going to have some exploratory programs also for students who are going to be interested in that work right so we are going to provide opportunities for students who are not necessarily in the atlas program to be able to engage in some of that work and the pelham arts center has been gracious enough and they really believe in our students
054and i'd like to thank them for all of their work to provide additional supports and activities for students who are interested so you will see those come out in about november once we solidify all of our partnerships oh my god thank you very much for your presentation and everything sounds wonderful we're very excited and one thing i do want to say that will make you squeal are you ready to squeal always so we have about 20 kids with ips that are in the program and i knew you would enjoy that and we have about 26 children who are marked eno that are in the program and that increase is due to the change in the screening assessment being non-verbal so we were very proud to increase the admission numbers in our subgroup areas because we
055believe it's very important and moving to a three-tier admission system and a special shout out to my staff who are all home relaxing for all of their hard work testing 704 children in 30 days and scoring is a a lot of work and we also did teacher recommendation and tiered it is a lot of work so kudos to them and kudos to all my administrators in their buildings for for dealing with another testing schedule because it was on top of our regular testing schedule you knew that was going to make me happy that's why you said the squeal situation i know i knew you were going to school so i just had to get you to get to school ready thank you for the sweetness thank you i just want to say whatever you touch
056turns to gold oh thank you thank you fantastic book is fantastic oh i'm sorry one more shout out jennifer cardillo at the print shop let me tell you i can't forget her um her and i were here till eight nine o'clock at night um formatting is and working it and testing every qr code and so i want to shout out to her and mike thompson for pictures and mr for taking pictures of the buildings and um he came out in the monsoon and y'all know he was two hours away and he came down to shoot for us that night so a special thank you to him also thank you for your dedication thank you thank you and thank you dr gayle wallis this is what we're talking about at all board meetings that's what we're
057going to do we're going to start focusing on children and this is the start of a new era thank you thank you and this concludes the superintendent presentation this time we have committee reports do we have any committee reports to discuss because at this time we can also assign committees you have any committee reports trustee simonson sure go ahead wait trustee miller do you have a committee report um i'm not sure whether we're meeting tomorrow or monday i'm waiting for dr bc to confirm it's going to be monday it's going to be what time 10 30. so there's a meeting monday at 10 30 here at the district which will include technology parent resource center pr people communications parent liaisons to work on the launch of the parent resource center in the fall and the
058launch of the new website monday at 10 30. okay parent resource yeah okay so um dr bc and i by the way um this is the special committee um dr bc and i met and we went over the proposal um for the um drowning slash aquatics program for our special needs children in mount vernon um we will be meeting with the stakeholders in order for us to have everything planned and set up to start in august that is our projected um starting time in august for week so our especially students could um enjoy a nice summer camp during august the other thing also is that we were discussing and trying to figure out for this not only to be an opportunity even though our main objectives are special needs but we are trying to figure
059out how can we get involved um with coach flores and um every other person in in in the in the this work that has capacity to the pool or has been renting the pool to see how can we expand the program also to the rest of the community so it's being worked on i'm not sure if we're going to start that piece in august because our goal is to start the special needs in august and but we are working on that to make sure that this is not only for special needs but it's also for um the community in general our kids to learn how to swim because it's extremely important the other thing is that i know that i have discussed not discussed i have mentioned that um the parent workshops you know the
060seahawk parent workshops as in conjunction with the special ed committee we wanted to keep on happening during the summer i was given time for um our wonderful wonderful dr smith to close everything up you know during the summer and summer school and get everything running for us to sit down and meet we i was going to call for the committee to meet to discuss when can we do a july one and when can we do the august one because i know people have been reaching out to me um on my you know via texts that they were really satisfied with the parent workshops that we put together and they were they were people see the need of it and we need to continue we as a committee we need to sit down and we need
061to continue to provide that support to our parents so i will be reaching out to you dr smith and to um president sanders and vice president white because they are part of the other two parts members of the committee for us to sit down and talk about the topics that we would like to cover in july and talk about the topics that we would like to cover in august and sit down and plan for the upcoming year that will get september rolling immediately thank you trustee sorensen um i guess you don't have a committee yet um trustee read anything oh yeah yes i'm ready for that trusty white anything from you trustee white committee report so i'd like to establish committee uh chairs do you have a committee ray sorry a poor guy he's like
062he's going to get us a whole student i have some stuff i have some stuff for you all right um so we can establish some committees right now if you wish okay um so um we have finance and budget trustee current is it two separate um committees yeah one we believe we separate we separate don't we which the financing budget no financial let's do it together okay so would you like to do i mean you can do whatever committee you want i just know you have mentioned that president sanders maybe we should send out the list to all to everyone so that we can sign up like that so we just sign up and we have transfers now you want everything to you and also if you could include schools assigned trustees to so what
063we guess well that was my next thing and then also when we do the schools we want to make sure we get pta involvement okay so we can talk about the schools if you want to talk about what schools you want to be assigned to if you want to do that right now you want to wait i would just say wait and so everyone knows the schools that they want so so everybody can send me an email as to what school they want because i'm already a member of the mount vernon high school pta i've been there for years so i think i'll just stick with that i'll stick with williams and i'll and i'll go to uh parker before i mention the schools that i'm interested um the other committee that we need to
064add to that list is the committee that um dr bc um myself and melissa patterson we started that is not you know part of the list we started um and i think i mentioned it already we started a non-english speaking you know students committee and we have already people involved in um that's something that needs to be on the list okay so as of non-english well we we as like we the committee have not yet decided the name but it's like the point is for the community to represent the non-english speaking population of mount vernon yeah we call it the enl community yeah yeah okay you know that's perfect dnl committee okay so are we doing schools i'm sorry yeah we usually we usually assign we usually have trustees that are assigned to schools um
065just to go in and check and you know be a part of the pta any issues there we can be you can be the voice for that school but i'm a part of every pta okay in the district however um i would take um trump hagan and pennington maybe do we want to do schools now or do you want to wait oh you want to wait for the schools i'm waiting for taylor swift waiting for the committees maybe we could wait for the schools i think just sent out the list of who already said yes i think it's the best way to set up a list and show people's interests yeah because since we're waiting for a list for the committees yep the other question that i have is in regards to schools i know
066that we have enough schools for everybody and even two or three for each trustee if two trustees have an interest in the same school is that something that we have done before that two trustees are you know the god parents of that school yeah okay long as we cover all the schools yeah yeah exactly you have four schools if you want no no i don't have time for but um the other thing is i did propose also a while back i don't know if you remember that also we should adopt you know we should become godparents of our teams you know each you know we have so many teams other than basketball other than football and you know the only thing that we hear all the time you know and don't get me wrong like
067our basketball team is amazing but we should also you know adopt teams and in us go and you know let them know that we care let them know that it's not we're not only a basketball track and football school you know we also love our soccer players we also love our swimmers we also love our um tennis players you know so i don't know if it's something that the the the board would like to engage in but it will be a good thing for our students to know that we also appreciate them and we're not only glorifying three sports you know that's just me okay duly noted thank you you're welcome so that's uh for committees anything else any follow-up for all business all right so we'll go into the um the resolutions taylor promotion
068a second to approve human resources memorandum 62a certified dated july 6th 2022 motion second any questions comments or concerns oh yeah [Music] opposed abstentions ocean carries can i please have a motion a second to approve human resources memorandum 62 be non-certified dated july 6 2022 motion any questions comments or concerns um i have jesus i have a concern and i know this is something that we have mentioned before here and i know that this might be overstepping our boundaries as trustees um when we are voting on these people not these people i don't want to say like that when we are voting on these positions to be filled we and we not not negating and you know the importance of what you go through and all of the you know the interviews and anything would
069have we ever asked have we ever as a board asked to see the credentials of these individuals at the cabinet level we've always at the cabinet level and the principal level we've always seen their resumes um but not at levels below that in my opinion in my record giving me yeah it's the height the higher level only for the higher levels right yeah no no okay yeah okay yeah okay okay [Music] yeah no because you know it's like it's just since you know it's good to for us to know i'm just saying thank you i will definitely check the confidential thank you very much thank you we are worried any further questions comments or concerns all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion a second to authorize complete budget transfers
070for 21 22 fiscal year motion second second can any questions comments or concerns yeah um when when do we anticipate uh mr silver when are we gonna you know feel like we've had this wrapped up i'm not sure your question the 22 so we're going to be doing budget transfers to balance out the 22. the 21 22 school year is what we're speaking of yes we have to balance out all the accounts i know everything has to zero out and when when what what's the time frame on doing that the auditors are have been working since may right and they finish in august they'll be finished in august okay thank you any further questions comments or concerns all in favor any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion and a second for
071the authorization to appoint staff for the 2022 summer food service program second any questions comments or concerns no all in favor aye aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion a second for the authorization to extend the all-county bus company contract for the 2022-2023 school year motion second any questions comments or concerns just a quick question was this that was this the firm where we had some concerns about the drivers not county was it was it all county or was it first student first year oh okay okay thank you and if this is the right now the um there's an increase on 6.3 increase which is the cost of living increase okay yep that's it yeah which is huge okay any further questions comments or concerns all in favor aye any
072opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion a second for authorization to extend whitson school nutrition corporation emergency food service management contract for the 2022-2023 school year promotion second any questions comments or concerns questions um i know woodson started out very well with us and then they start going downhill a little i hope that we can start a testing maybe to see what they're going to present we did it at the very beginning of them but when we hired them at first but now i get complaints all the time about some of the food yep dr bennett conroy right already has a meeting set up with whitson's to discuss their program for this coming year and how they're going to improve what they're doing yes and thank you trustee miller had a suggestion
073earlier about what to do so i think we may um um i have a question as well and this might be in your ignorance for my part um why are there so many cross out items in this in the explanation this was this was an update of the emergency contract which the state is now allowing for the last time uh and it comes back it's called emergency because they increased what they pay us and they redacted some things just didn't belong in the in the renewal of the contract the state did those redactions and the state approved this contract okay because it honestly doesn't really look good and i have received phone calls like about transparency and all of a sudden like it's good that you what was taken out was just not relevant no
074no that's what i'm talking thank you very much for uh specifying that it was the state that is not us because i was getting calls about transparency and why we were doing this but thank you for saying that it was the state i appreciate that if it was us we won't put it there transparency there you go all in favor any opposed abstentions motion carries and please have a motion in a second to approve a consultant agreement with richard mccormick for tax collection services motion second any questions comments or concerns that will be my question we are we are working on um getting some staff who can manage this part-time so rick is helping us just through august 31st and then we're going to be on our own from that point on we don't have
075anyone to train right now so would you be able to hire someone we we dr bc and i are working on on a plan yes that is a plan because i really and i spoke to um mr silver about it i really don't want anybody to be working here during the course of the day because it interferes with the job that they have to do during the course of the day so we're definitely going to hire somebody for that job okay and rick will be able to train that individual hopefully because before now and august yes but didn't we didn't we vote for didn't we we had a contract just through the end of uh june we need to continue throughout the summer while we get our plans in place okey-dokey all in favor any
076opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion in a second for authorization to renew a contract with kg d architects to serve as district architect for the 2022-2023 fiscal year hmm [Music] this is a renewal renewal of the company that did the building conditions survey and that is now involved in the demolition of the grimes annex involved in the oil tank project so they're involved in all of our capital projects at this time so this is a year by year uh contract and this is a the second renewal first renewal of the contract let me it's one year at a time but we can we can have it for five years and then we have to go out again my question is since we are having the issues that we discussed what what
077would happen if we say no if we vote this down no the issues is not with them okay the issues are with us okay thank you you know the way you're feeling look definitely i'm just asking because we did ask that question about you know right with us so the issue is not with them is with us good clarification 6.6 okay all in favor hi hi okay any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion in a second to authorize bay oaks group to serve as insurance consultants for the 2022 2023 school year motion ocean second any questions comments or concerns all in favor aye any opposed abstentions motion carries and i please have a motion in a second for authorization to renew the agreement with broad spire services for third-party administration for
078self-insured liability claims for the 22-23 school year motion second any questions comments or concerns all in favor aye aye any opposed abstentions wanda no i i'm so i'm really sorry i'm it's the one i was looking to see i please have a motion a second to authorize an agreement with seneca consulting for administrative and financial consultation services in connection with the affordable care act for 2022-23 fiscal year ocean second any questions comments or concerns all in favor any opposed abstentions motion carries and i please have a motion in a second for authorization to renew the agreement with spain agency to provide workers compensation services to the district for the 2022-2023 school year motion okay any questions comments or concerns is this the same one we've been using yes this is the fourth or fifth year
079and the price has never changed and they have a person here on site four days a week to manage our workers comp who is that shelby fields and you should know our premiums have gone down and our accidents have gone down shelby goes out to the schools and works with the uh all staff to try to make things safer in each of the buildings okay all in favor any impose abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion a second for authorization to renew the agreement with the spain agency to serve as the retail agent for insurance coverage for the 2022-2023 school year motion second any questions comments or concerns all in favor aye all in favor aye any opposed three people said i any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion
080a second for authorization to extend printer maintenance and supply contract added to the services of cbs xerox for 2022-2023 fiscal year second any questions comments or concerns all in favor aye aye any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion a second for authorization to pay other school districts for health and related services for the 2022-2023 school year [Applause] second any questions comments or concerns [Applause] students anytime we have a child going to a school that is in another school district could be parochial or private school we are responsible to pay for the health services provided there's a state formula we they have to fill it out it's like twelve to thirteen hundred dollars a child for the year which is our share of the cost of the nursing services provided by the
081private or parochial school to our child all in favor any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion a second for authorization for placement of coverage for the 2022-2023 fiscal year with aflac new york to provide extended health coverage motion thank you any questions comments or concerns any of our contractors well it's speaking to aflac affleck provides cancer coverage which is an extension of our of our insurance but we don't pay for that that is paid for by so each of each of the ones that we previously discussed are through rfps or bids and they last for a certain number of years there are several things that are not on here uh our external auditor is just finishing their final year of the five years we now have to do an rfp for
082an auditor and that will be on another agenda and so any contractor like concrete repairs or other things that are not part of what we're renewing we have to do either an rfp or a bid depending upon the type of service or we can use a bid from the state all in favor aye aye any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion in a second to approve school improvement personnel memorandum p 23-1 dated july 6 2022. okay second any questions comments or concerns this is for the summer programs that we're running out of bc all in favor aye aye any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have a motion in a second to approve student services memorandum number one dated july 6 2022 motion any questions comments or concerns are we
083going to be addressing you know you know you and i would have had the discussion before all of the services that the kids did not receive during the school year right now including like resource room and everything else that's listed no that's what i'm saying because i want i just want to hear it because even though it's listed i'm concerned because we got no large numbers and i'm not talking about like hey you missed three days hey you missed four sessions i'm talking about there are students out there that have missed 25 sessions they have missed you know and i know that it was not your dream or anybody like for example the beginning of the school year we couldn't we didn't have anyone and like for example my son didn't get um physical therapy
084for september october on all the way till december so that's three months worth of therapy and i know he's not the only one so i just want to know if we are going to be addressing that in particular was his services made up did they make up his services no um basically all the supervisors compiled lists of services that was missed and we are trying to make them up during this during the summer it could possibly extend into the school year okay thank you because that's that i just want to make sure that i will when i'm asked or when i'm somebody approaches me about it i just want to make sure that i give them the exact answer thank you very much we have started some of them right we started pass this is
085for going for this school year yeah this is just moving forward this is for this school year let's just move all the past um services were filled so completely i'm sorry basically yes there was believe in our parents that refused services they didn't they felt they didn't want the services but they were all offered they were offered yeah um i was not i'm gonna be honest with you i was never offered as a parent i was never offered are you talking about this school year or last school year this school year no we didn't get to this school yeah no and even and even some of the last last school year we never made and this is me as a parent we never made up the entire days for example with resource room there was
086a lot of them that was not made up and we had i think it was ot you know it was lt or pt what are all to opt in so we're kind of confusing two things no but yeah our makeup services is really for the related services services yep resources is not considered a related service people saying related services we spent a lot of time making that up for the 22 20 the 21 22 school year sorry we're moving forward with that starting in the summer and moving in probably into next year correct so i'll i will discuss then my personal issue later okay thank you tmpt or is that cert those services uh are related otp and speech are the three related services resource room is not a related service i'll just keep on
087mentioning it because right so we do otp um as you aware speech otp we have limited resource that's why we say we may have to carry over with that we had we we were low in personnel so any other questions comments or concerns nobody says anything all in favor opposed absentions motion carries can i please have a motion a second to for the approval of additional summer work for direct for directors motion any questions comments or concerns all in favor any opposed extensions all in favor all right hi um i think i did that already oh can i please have a motion in a second for the appointment of medical staff for the summer 2022 sports physicals motion any questions comments or concerns all in favor any opposed abstentions motion carries can i please have
088a motion a second to authorize an employment agreement with erica peterson as parent resource center coordinator i just i need a motion in a second first motion motion second question comments concerns uh i think no no i just wanted somebody why would we well there's a motion on the floor so if if we're taking this motion you must discuss it that's it oh these are okay okay okay so i did a second so i i have no idea what okay only have one do the next meeting i'm not going to discuss it now you want to see you want to discuss it in excel okay she wants to go back into exec so let's go finish the meeting and we can come back and adjourn it okay so let's finish uh so we need to
089um do we have to have a motion to go i have no idea she wants to be the next meeting yeah you want a table for the next meeting okay okay do i have a second for that motion all in favor any opposed abstentions i'm saying i'm sorry i'm saying because i have no idea what's going on right now so um we may be out of here early mm-hmm maybe maybe out of here you get 20 minutes right i'm 14. okay so what's next um [Music] can i have a motion in a second to accept the minutes of this june 21st 2022 board of education minute meeting motion second all in favor any opposed abstentions the new trustees have to abstain you are here right you have to abstain yeah both of you thank you
090motion carries they don't have to abstain but well how how can they improve the minutes if they were in attendance i never approve minutes if i'm not in attendance you know oh i see what you're saying sorry okay it's still passed it's still exactly i think it's a precautionary you know situation okay so we have another motion oh yes um yes please no that's a journey oh okay um second second second second motion motion to adjourn okay all in favor aye i don't know if everybody's in favor of that thank you everyone thanks for showing up tonight