BOE MEETING 030921

001[Music] good evening welcome to the march 9th meeting of the board of education in mount vernon city school district mr mccormack could you please call the roll good evening trustee redd president trustee turnquist visit trustee crump trustee mitchell president trustee patterson president jesse mcewen president trustee white president roxy saunders president trustee miller president quorum is present ma'am all righty do we have any communications from the public this evening we do our first communication reads as follows greetings trustees and mount vernon community for the past eight or more years i have been hoping for more engagement and follow-up on the issue of an all-disciplined all-ages african-centered curriculum that would be more appropriate and just for our students and our community that hope has been eclipsed by the recent social justice demands that have now made commonplace

002such requests as honest and anti-racist education unfortunately i become aware that the challenge to meet the moment for the mount vernon city school district has been served by a more minimalist goal of african-american literature and a limited scale of graduate applications sorry put that phone face down now please explain if this is a plan to be expanded to an african-centered curriculum or not if not why not second and finally i've been tracking the national trend to install broadband wireless and other 5g related services in many areas of the united states among these efforts by verizon and spectrum corporations which are targeting mount vernon as well are being steadily resisted by communities that are concerned about the health risks of this technology while our community is well overdue for an equitable distribution of technology solutions that

003enable 21st century education the most viable and risk adverse solution seems to not be 5g millimeter wave technology but municipal owned wired broadband are you as a body prepared to support the municipal owned solution if not are you prepared to face the health risks to our children and educational staff along with related legal consequences outlined in the webinar linked below sincerely l jeff monroe our next letter reads my purpose this evening is to alert the board of trustees on the development of a potential harvard business school case study on mount vernon city school district cases are primarily used for class discussion by business school students cases offer students experience in dealing with complex realistic situations with an emphasis on decision making through working with me the hbs research learning group has finalized a case lead

004summary where i am the protagonist the next step is for me to obtain sponsorship by an hbs professor for full case development i provided a copy of the case lead summary so that the trustees can review with the potential case issues and topics i've also provided a second document that has an overview of the hba hbs case development and answers to frequently asked questions over a week ago i briefed dr hamilton on the development of the potential hbs case i'm the host of the case but i'll continue to keep dr hamilton abreast of the case's development thank you robert d jones school parent and district employee that concludes communications from the public madam president if i may i'd like to respond please yes uh first semester uh to mr monroe the district has uh done

005some extraordinary work around uh dei uh diversity equity and inclusion training which includes a very high level uh training for our district staff around culturally how to deliver culturally relevant curriculum one of the things that we have been focused on over the last six months actually uh seven months in fact is making certain our teachers are well equipped uh to answer questions deliver curriculum understand cultural implications as a result of what's been happening on a national level uh so before we can really uh work as intimately as we all based on what's happening on a national level it's imperative that we train our teachers and i would like uh like very much to be able to share with mr monroe some of the literature we have been using on our wednesday sessions with our staff

006and how involved uh and engaged our staff have been in these discussions and then we will move into furthering because we already have uh started the work on um making certain that our curriculum reflects the people in our community um but then there's another level of work that we will be engaged in with this uh culturally relevant and culturally sensitive curriculum that is at the forefront of our curriculum revision cycles as well regarding mr jones mr jones has shared information with me uh about this study i'm actually very interested in uh in this study and finding out more about um how this data will be utilized how mount vernon will be referenced in the data and how we might be able to use this this research once the study is done and i will certainly

007keep the board abreast on that um as soon as i get more information i don't know how long the study is for example i don't know if it's a quantitative study or qualitative study or uh if it's a longitudinal study in which even i i would like to know when it will end but i'll reach out to mr jones by way of email and respond to it because he did send me an email um and respond to that as well so i have a question so so should um should mr monroe uh find out more about the direction we're going in through the education committee would that be the platform doctor that would be the perfect platform because the education committee is well first on what we've been doing uh around this series and where

008we're heading um and uh turned question trustee turnquist jones is uh doing a phenomenal job with facilitating those conversations um so he can certainly reach out to uh dr gorman who can connect him with turncoats trustee tarquis jones uh and she can decide which agenda would be the most appropriate for him to attend okay so so basically yeah i think that's a that that's a good idea and uh uh jeff monroe i know jeff monroe as well and um i think it'd be really excellent also if um when i meet with him that i can also share the literature that um that we are studying together as one that uh dr bennett conroy uh gave me i think that he will be extremely excited about the um the the the platform and where we are

009going with this great great so the process has begun and we're in the process of furthering it okay now on the broadband um municipal supported wired broadband i don't know i'm going to ask mr mcgrath yes so there's the new technology is the 5g technology and what the letter seems to suggest is that there may be concerns around the health concerns of 5g now that's something that um a lot of professionals have debunked some people have you know um some people believe that's true um some people there was something in across um it was in england where they thought 5g was causing some other health issues um so i can't really speak to that except to say that i haven't seen concrete evidence one way or the other about 5g and i think they're still

010being researched on and i don't know that um that anybody can definitively say um based on the research that's available that there's definitive proof that 5g has health concerns so i think that's something that we we can't speak on at this point well it's we're not i mean that's not really our purview it's really more the city but i think the issue on the broadband the municipal broadband that would also be the city and i think the school district's position you know i think i guess we just are interested um mr mcgrath in being able to serve as many students as possible with as robust and infrastructure as possible 100 and obviously the more points of access that are available the better right so if the city decided to pursue providing wi-fi access across the

011city that would be that would be a good thing that'd be a good thing for the students it might be a good thing you know arguably for the population as a whole so okay yeah great okay um let's see dr hamilton do you have a report i do um so officially good evening to all and i do have a couple of things i would like to share with you this evening two will be in the form of a presentation uh first i'd just like to reiterate that our fast break program which was our focused academic supplemental teaching program that we ran over the march break uh was successful um and how could it not be you're essentially getting one-on-one instruction from uh tutorial services from your teacher or a teacher um and so we are

012extending that now for the spring break and that will include our k through eight students we are expanding it um and our goal again is to support students who we have identified who may have shown some regression i think we can anticipate nationally that there will be a covet slide that many of our students experience although we're fortunate in that we've actually seen some increases on on some of our uh data as a result of even during covet so we are very hopeful that this spring break fast program over the spring break will yield more favorable results we have also been preparing and participating in lobby day uh which is being done virtually lobby day is an opportunity for superintendents and business officials to meet with different members of the senate and different members of

013the budget and the governor's budget and finance committee to directly express our concerns and to raise any kind of specific distinct characteristics from their individual districts that we need them to keep on their radar as they anticipate uh budget allocations uh we have stressed upon them and i shared a rough draft of my uh notes with the board over the weekend but our most significant uh concerns are obviously state aid and it's each year we have this opportunity to have these um intimate conversations and sometimes i frankly find myself quite discouraged because i don't feel like i'm we're getting anywhere uh but at the same time having audience knowing that these people are taking the time um to listen to us is certainly um complimentary in the to say the very least so the governor's

014proposal provides an increase in our aid contingent on the receipt of federal funding to mitigate the state aid cuts that we were anticipating the governor's additional proposals call for a change in block grant funding which if it takes place will have a devastating uh impact on our transportation aid uh so we have asked that the powers that be um vote uh against something that would compromise funding for mount vernon particularly in the form of transportation aid we have also asked them to understand that the proposal that each taxpayer received a full tax bill which would offset a check that the state would mail to homeowners would be beneficial of course to our taxpayers and our school district should be noted for our efforts to ensure that our taxpayers are eligible for those rebates because of

015our fiscal management we are also keeping on their radar the fact that like many districts covet has put a strain on our budget and while it is true that there are some experiences we did not have because schools were virtually uh opera were not operating at full capacity there have been a lot of unanticipated costs um of course there are some we can anticipate that there will be some kind of surcharge because health insurance companies are obviously being hit pretty hard because of claims we also know that there's been some significant costs for ppe so we put this up on their radar as well and of course we have expressed again that our community is over taxed and our ability our taxpayers ability uh to support our schools uh is a level different than some

016is a little different than some other school districts so it is imperative that the state fully fund its formula and lift the burden from the taxpayers in mount vernon in particular we have also raised another unique feature in that we were already at 10 of our students identified as homeless and that number is growing as a result of covet we don't even have the actual numbers frankly because there are students who have not yet reported our parents who have not reported that they are homeless because they are in temporary housing with extended family members some even in other states as a result of covet so we are very concerned about how that will impact our students um we have also raised the issue that the state owes mount vernon about 10 million dollars in back

017building aid this is an issue we continue to raise um and we keep it on their radar right now we are scheduled to be repaid in 2027. uh we need the money now um and we have said we need the money now uh we have also expressed that um we need the state to take a different approach on charter schools that this this idea that money following students does not impact communities like mount vernon is misleading it absolutely it compromises us tremendously um because it does not reduce our expense because the children are are leaving um i just spoke in opposition to another charter school that's proposed in mount vernon albeit grand in its design uh it still will be a burden to our community and lastly we have asked the state to look very

018carefully at up county construction the elk county construction cost index there has been legislation vetoed by the governor to include us in new york city and long island in terms of the cost for construction uh the effect of this problem is that our maximum cost allowance or mca is lower than it should be and that we cannot do construction at the same lower cost as areas of state and we urge the passage of this legislation which would be vital to our mission of course to help our students and improve our facilities this will be imperative as we begin to put plans in place to address our vcs our building condition survey um which is something that we will be spending more time on discussing in greater detail in a future meet meeting so those are

019the issues that i've been able to articulate to the senators that we have spoken to uh we still have senator bailey on schedule um assemblyman pretlow is on schedule we have already met with um senator oh congressman bo bowman is on the calendar as well that we will be speaking with and we've already spoken with uh susan mayer mayor yes uh not susan senator mayor i'm sorry um so those are the items that we have put on uh the radar i'd also like to share with the board um our i guess we will do our superintendent action plan presentation first and then i'll share with you a very brief overview on the work of the reopening committee the superintendent action plan is really our way to document and chronicle the administration's efforts and progress with

020meeting the board approved goals the board adopted these goals in 2019 toward the end of the year i think it was in december of 2019 um this these goals were developed collaboratively with the board during a retreat that i think was in august or september but it was a very deliberate process what's unique about mount vernon uh which i think is to our credit as a team and i talk when i talk about the team i'm talking about the board and the administration is we've been able to uh collaborate on district goals that all build also become superintendent goals in addition to any merit goals obviously but in terms of district goals that uh ensure that we are all moving in the right in the same direction on the same bus and everybody in the

021right seat so i'm very proud of that so this is our report to you on our progress towards meeting those goals and it took uh it is a collaborative effort the members of the cabinet mem uh that are listed here uh all share in these goals along with our principals who share in these goals and we've provided some evidence by way of an appendix to show you uh what that progress looks like quantitatively so our first goal is the goal that's centered around student achievement and there were certain indicators that the board uh identified during our uh retreat uh the first is pre-k through three looking at a percentage increase of all students reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade and the target was to increase district-wide on an average

022of five percent per year over the next five years which was a very thoughtful goal um and one that is sustainable realistic and achievable with the right supports our goal of course has been to make sure that the teachers and principals have the supports and resources necessary to meet these goals the board's goal is the board's responsibility is to monitor and make sure that i have what i need is the superintendent and my job is to make sure principals and teachers have what they need in order for us to work in concert around these goals the second indicator is a goal targeting third through eighth grade students and the percentage of all students and these are our test years uh achieving on the nyset or the new york state education department rating of three or

023better three being recognized as the state's current designation as proficient or better in english language arts and mathematics with an increase of three to five percent per school year over the next five years again a very thoughtful deliberate goal and then looking at our key indicator for our secondary students or ninth to twelfth grade students so that by the year 2025 the percentage of students completing graduating uh in the four-year cohort will increase district-wide to 80 and we'll be able to show you our progress with meeting that goal our second goal looks at educating the whole child and looking at an individualized plan designed specifically to address each student similar to a an iep or an educational or individualized educational plan that a student with special needs would have where our goal is to make

024sure there is a plan for every student in our district whether an iep exists or not looking at our various data streams each student will have a mount vernon city school district experience monitored by a uniform system that enabled teachers and administrators to track and understand the students progress from year to year and from school to school so this is very specifically looking at a system that helps our teachers understand um the indicators of success and opportunities for growth for every student in our district that follows them like a portfolio an academic portfolio from year to year our second goal our second indicator under this goal is a holistic approach around student wellness the district will begin to develop and implement by the opening of the 2223 school year a comprehensive plan to support the

025social emotional needs of all students this includes a curriculum that will look at anti-bullying education mindfulness mindfulness restorative justice and conflict resolution skills this is a goal a a goal that i think is very important particularly now as we look at any mental wellness approaches that we need to take for our students and we have also looked at programs that will support our teachers and staff members as well indicator 2.3 is diverse pathways to secondary education understanding that education is broad and diverse and so must be the various pathways available to students in order to reach their full potential so each of our school districts will equit each of our high schools i'm sorry we'll develop an equitable profile for our students that is comprehensive and regular and rigorous and rigorous which ensures diverse pathways

026that gives them the opportunity to explore their own interests and achievements throughout their high school experience at mount vernon high in particular it will become a leading institution and offering non-traditional pathways for graduation uh when we had this discussion uh in our retreat of the board was particularly interested in making certain that we expanded offerings at mount vernon high school to ensure that students had a unique experience there including college partnerships cte offerings flexible scheduling which may have also included a a work schedule a part-time shared experience where students may be able to gain work experience while they are in school at the same time and of course the introduction of the international baccalaureate program which we were able to accomplish ahead of schedule and indicator for 2.4 is beyond high school getting data in

027place a mechanism in place to see how well our students are succeeding beyond graduation so by the 2025 graduating class 75 percent of our students will have applied to a four or two-year college trade or conservatory and or completed a career vocational training program so this means that putting these programs in place we now need a mechanism to monitor how students are accessing them and using them as they make their secondary their post high school experiences and lastly goal three is our goal that looks at fiscal planning it's smart planning goal which is proactive and forward thinking relative to reducing uh increasing revenue sources and reducing uh the burden on the local taxpayers so this strategic plan was designed as a part of our annual budget planning process that the district will develop and maintain

028a rolling multi-year strategic plan with a fiscal component that anticipates what capital improvements would be necessary how we would make investments in programming that is designed to be sustainable on years to come and anticipate future expenditures as well as highlights for district expenses with a multi-year approach in mind and lastly the second indicator is to increase non-tax revenue specifically partnering with different entities like the mount vernon educational foundation looking at grant opportunities uh how to increase our state funding through advocacy work which we uh again just talked about with lobby day and increasing our partnerships with both our non-profit and our for-profit entities in the district so those are the three broad goals and the various indicators of success that would let us know and well as as well as our public that we are

029indeed working toward accomplishing these these goals that are in total alignment with the vision and mission statement so our first goal looks specifically at student achievement and these are some of the initiatives that are in place that are designed specifically to address the student achievement issue and reaching those targets and those indicators of success so i will not elaborate on all of them i've highlighted some that i'd like to talk about uh beginning with our you know universal pre-k and balanced literacy initiative a balanced literacy initiative which i'll talk about before i have dr gail white wallace talked about universal pre-k uh our balanced literacy initiative is a research-based program that when implemented with fidelity has very strong evidence to support when it is done properly students are reading on or above grade level by

030grade three we started with a small scale rollout at edward williams to make certain that we had the supports in place the materials in place and the professional development in place for our teachers and principals to roll out dallas literacy with efficacy the data at edward williams is clear that our students that were part of this pilot have in fact been beneficiaries of this huge investment we are now expanding that that's reflected in our budget process we've been strategic and systematic in rolling it out because there is a hefty price tag to it so we are rolling it out um in groups so that we're not doing it all at once uh all across the district and through the support of our office of school improvement we've been able to secure and allocate grant funding

031to support that initiative as well we also have an initiative that we've partnered with scholastic at mandela to make sure that we were offering our teachers a series of options as it relates to a literacy initiative and making certain that we close that gap for our students the more we invest in our students earlier on the more likely it is we will close those gaps around literacy and getting them on grade level um dr gail white wallace you want to talk more about you universal pre-k absolutely dr hamilton everybody yeah usually the little people are bringing up the rear so that we get to go first for once and talk about fabulousness so we are addressing um section one of our superintendent and board goals and the pre-kindergarten department has been making waves in all

032of our content areas what you're seeing in front of you is a very quick synopsis of how our students fared in our beginning of the year diagnostic now due to covet you were unable to administer this assessment in september so you're actually seeing what students have learned in around late october november on competencies that were taught by our teachers so very quickly you really want to keep your eye on that blue that blue tells us out of 100 of our students which our enrollment is at about 380 students right now how many of our students are proficient in those areas in which we have covered in the first marking period stellar numbers everybody across the board hands clap shimmy and shake for the entire pre-kindergarten department if you notice our areas that we do need

033to work with students are are rapid vocabulary as well as rope counting and counting by sets so what does that mean for a pre-k student when we're looking at this type of sophisticated data this means that our students are meeting their benchmark over and above the percentages set forth by the board and superintendent dr hamilton in those areas that we need additional support we have convened as a department a small group instruction protocol for students that are at home and in school in order to work on these particular skills we are also making sure we are focusing on wow word and specific tier 2 vocabulary to support our vocabulary instruction i will be happy to report to the board on our progress on those subcategories that we are focusing on after the spring break teaches

034are right now starting on monday to assess in those specific areas of focus to measure our growth and our focus in those areas next slide now everybody's really interested about how effective is pre-k are we really getting to pay for our buck well let me tell you here the charts in front of you are showing the difference in achievement between those students who attended a full day pre-k and those who did not might i add we did include our students with special needs in this data and they are excelling as well at rebecca turner elementary school so hand claps for them also so when we look at our data for our pre-k students from kindergarten to grade one to grade two you see that the students that attended full day pre-k are outperforming our students

035at over 30 percent in proficiency so for example in kindergarten 54 of the students were above grade level versus 30 of the students who did not attend pre-k it's it's astounding numbers and if we collapse those numbers together you're looking at 44 of students who did not attend pre-k proficient versus 82 of those who did attend pre-k being proficient i i'd say our pre-kindergarten students and our pre-kindergarten department we are producing students that are ready to learn they are ready for kindergarten if you notice the data that we are also showing for grade two we then see a smaller margin of the achievement of these students but we are still outperforming those students with about 20 so in conclusion over time our students are still faring better over time than those students who did not

036attend full day pre-k next slide uh doc that's that's all you get i think dr white wallace there was another slide where we did a longitudinal study uh comparing our pre-k uh students to the cohort of students that did not attend i will include that uh artifact um when i send this final version to the board which most of which you have already but we did add some more artifacts as we had more time to develop the data i know that the board has asked for more graphs and charts as a way to illustrate um to make it more uh more visually readable for our parent audience and community members so that's what we've been working on so this this document has been evolving uh and i shared with you over the weekend that we

037will continue to work over uh over the weekend and kudos to the team for being able to do that okay we have some more data we're going to going to show you on some longitude new data on our student progress and opportunities for growth dr hamilton i think um we wanted a pre precursor to this on our professional development to showcase our professional development so as we were putting together the how we wanted to uh chronicle our journey because it's not just about ringing bells and blowing whistles and giving parades rah-rah we're doing a great job but how are we creating systems to sustain the work that's underway and the programs that the district has made this extraordinary investment in schools are human resource driven organizations so that means the investment in people is paramount

038to creating results that are sustainable over time so regardless to who the principal may be in leadership or who the superintendent may be in leadership building a culture around professional practices is vital to making certain the investment is something that the district maintains and investing in its people its teachers its staff is one of the most valuable things we can do in order to make certain that these results continue and with that professional development has been our calling card uh this is where um this is one of the things that has attracted so many other districts to look at the work we've been able to do and the investment we have made in the people resources in our organization uh dr gorman you want to talk about some of the learning our professional learning opportunities

039that have been in place sure good evening everybody just uh wanted to touch on some of the changes so you know when we are leading in a culture of change and when we're talking about a culture of change we're talking about pandemic right with covert 19 transformation of of technology um living with current issues such as diversity and equity and so appropriately we've had to adjust and change our model of delivery for professional development um and they are guided by some some guiding principles five guiding principles that i just want to touch on really briefly number one we try to speak current and relevant we try to have our techno our our professional learning based in both technology roots but when we get back together eventually blend it with in-person processing as well um we

040try to keep it in digestible bites right it's very easy to be overwhelmed especially in the last year um staring at a computer for hours upon hours does nobody any good there has to be small digestible bites breaks and then application so choice matters as well right so giving everybody the same thing is not really responsive so we do assessments um needs assessments and the catalogs that you see highlighted in the newsletters are based off of teacher feedback and they're also based on these superintendent goals so we try to align the professional learning to meet the professional learning that the goal is to meet the professional learning additionally we try to when we deliver the professional learning we try to give them content features we try to give them time to process and make sense

041of things right so if you're just given stuff a lot of times the stuff goes right by you so it's very important for people to process to make sense of how this these new strategies these new technologies these new resources are going to help and apply our webinars have gained incredible accolades this year it's not so much what happens in the webinar it's what happens after the webinar when people process and make sense of things application is key so what we learn we want to apply to what we're teaching and delivering to students and lastly we want this training to be ongoing and repetitive everybody adult learners like kids arrive at learning at different times and different places it's when those epiphanies go on happen and those aha moments that everyone gets to move accordingly

042and that's how the change of practice um is developed so as you can see we've created a monthly newsletters for the staff there are workshops ongoing throughout the school year for staff to continue to get up to speed on zoom on neuropod on on on parent workshops on anything that has is relevant to this district and accordingly we've received a lot of accolades for it and we continue to provide all these opportunities for our staff and it's important that we continue to make these offerings and continue to follow up on these offerings there's a lot of content and a lot of digital resources and educational resources and the last thing we want to do is even though we're in some forms of isolation we need to build a learning community virtually and together and so

043that's the foundation of our professional development landscape and then subsequently we hope it equates to learning gains um dr hamilton the next set of data slides i think comes off with some historical data so we've put together some historical data um so you could say well what what is the impact what impact does the budgetary allocations the programs and services and the investment in people how does it trickle down and impact students um mr stevenson i am if you will begin if you will i'll talk about these graphs so i've asked over the weekend um i asked mr stevenson to put together data that would show us uh how are we making progress in moving students from one tier to the next over um using a multi-year lens uh as our landscape and this longitudinal

044view uh looks at our data from 2017 to 2021 keep in mind this last year i don't know what to make of it in terms of data and how we're digesting this data and how we're going to use this data but it is data and we have to figure out where it fits in the lan and the big picture marlin thank you dr hamilton and hello to everyone thanks again for having me um so the the graphs that we're going to start with are the ela graphs so boi stands for beginning of the year moi stands for middle of the year like dr hamilton said we go back to 2017-2018 school year and it comes to the most recent set of diagnostic tests that they took red represents students that are two or more grade

045levels below their current grade yellow represents students that are one grade level below their current grade and green represents students that are on or above grade level there are three diagnostic tests given each year but tonight we'll be looking at the beginning of the year in the middle of the year diagnostic test results these diagnostic tests are administered to grades through two to grades eight the ela boi for the last three years student performance on the ela boi have been similar for each cohort of students but this year we have actually seen a small increase in student achievement the red column is usually higher than normal with the bois because the diagnostic is given in september when the students return from the summer break a lot of students might experience a summer summer slide which

046is uh similar to what dr hamilton mentioned with the colbit slide that we anticipate they're going through right now um and it's always that high because students uh have not received significant instruction as of yet so because they're just coming back from the summer it's september they get this baseline test which tells us where they are coming in and then we can track their growth over the year with the next two diagnostic tests excuse me one second brothers just so i can uh jump in for a second the i ready assessment which the district um made a commitment to in 2017 um is generally uh within 15 predictability of how well students will do on the state assessment um so that's why we rely so much on the i ready data in addition to that

047however one of the goals that the board adopted in 2019 really looked at our secondary level students what kinds of assessments will we have in place that will give us the same kind of snapshot for a high school student because the assessments are not as plentiful at the high school level as they are for example um what you see on your screen before you so that we are currently engaged in a huge district initiative to create assessments district made assessments that will give us this same kind of data not exclusively for the high school but in addition to the high school and in addition to the i ready assessment we will have these measures that in place that will measure help us identify how these students are performing when i ready is not available for

048them so go ahead mr stevenson i'm sorry could you go back to that slide please dr gorman for the thank you for the moi diagnostic exam students have received half a year's worth of instruction which is reflected in this increased student performance for the last three years student performance was in a narrow range almost identical but there was a slight increase in the number of students that are two or more grade levels below and a decrease in the number of students one grade level below the students on or above grade level remain that 36 for each year comparing this year's ela boi and moi there was a three percent increase in the students on our above grade level and the one percent increase in the students that are two or more uh grade levels below

049there was a decrease in the number of students one grade level below which is the yellow as some students moved to the other performance groups which resulted in the one percent increase in red and the three percent increase in green for the math for both boi and moi the prior year's performance trend in a similar range respectively in those three years there was a decrease in the number of students that performed two or more grade levels below increasing the number of students one or grade level below group some students also move from one grade level below to on or above grade to the on or above grade level group this year's performance broke the prior year's trend as they had an average 12 percentage points gain from boi to mly in students that are on

050or above grade level there is only a 3 gain for this year so far next slide please these charts cover the same period that we just looked at as but this segregates the data by grades um so that when it gets past that and posted you can take a closer look on this slide specifically just to compare the grades and the years just to see how the students have performed going back to 2017 for each grade next slide please the next one please i think that's all we get for at this little snapshot okay yes so the graduation data later so one one of um our point in doing this and we the the intent is to do this this uh snapshot twice a year for the board so that you will be able to

051we will be able to say all right we're on target for meeting those goals or we are not if we are not on target for meeting those broad goals going back to the the board and superintendent's goals then we need to rethink and retool and readjust our approach so that means looking at programs looking at what we've invested in looking at pd looking at all those things that we have anticipated will impact our progress and results reaching those targets this is why the work has to be so focused and so uninterrupted so that we know if it's working continue to move in that vein if it is not shift gears reinvent reimagine recreate so that we can accomplish those goals all right on avid advent is a huge investment that the district have has made

052how do our children do in comparison to non-avid students dr gorman you want to talk about grade performance and gpas on our avid students sure so just as a precursor um have the avid elective classes in certain schools right it's that it's primarily at the steam academy at mount vernon high school as a mechanism to bridge learning to get the higher levels of learning to get to the international baccalaureate program which is more rigorous so you have to have a mechanism to get there it also its foundation is in college and career readiness so it starts to monitor how many of our kids are applying to four-year colleges to two-year colleges that's part of the senior data and i'll show you that snapshot from two years back last year there was sort of a pause

053on senior data this year our kids and our teachers are working to put that senior data in um to get to comparative statistics from a national um perspective so one of the things that we like to do is we like to say hey if it's not a direct correlation because it's very hard for one thing to equate to another independently with all with all the variables going on in schools and learning and family and and and the whole child but one of the things that we can look at is how are the kids at the secondary level that are in the in the elective how are they doing one of the unique things about advocate is that we try to maintain is that the kids enter an avid elective class in ninth grade that they

054stay actually with that teacher for four years that's incredibly powerful especially with all our work that we're talking about in mental wellness social and emotional learning those teachers are the ones that are texting and calling and reaching the kids and saying get to school what's going on in this class how can i support you um how can i talk to your parents and and how can we get you to reach your maximum potential avid stands for advancement via individual determination how do we tap that individual determination in the students that we serve so one of the things that we were able to do is we were able to give a short a small breakdown from this year how are kids that are in the elective class overall doing against other kids in our district regarding

055grades so we looked at our grade point averages from a marking period one for those kids that are in avid compared with the ones that are not taking avid and you could see significantly um in in the last three years that those kids are outperforming um kids that are not um in the avid class as far as gpa now gpa is just one measure right and it could be it could be a strength of schedule it could be a number of reasons but we said hey let's just take a look and see how are kids doing compared to the kids that are not in the electives class we also looked um at the three different schools right so this is where the elective is is being presented at um the steam academy the high school

056and btms we also have a feeder schools that hopefully will see a vertical alignment that the kids that are coming out of our theater schools primarily at columbus edward williams grimes and graham pennington and hamilton are late implementers but they're doing they're starting to really get engaged in the process as well how are those kids performing against the other kids and lastly i'll give you a couple of quick snapshots this this dashboard that you see on the left is the senior data and this shows you how many kids are taking um sjts acts applying to colleges who are they and how do they match up against other kids across the nation and in the district and so this was the 2018-19 college senior data that was our first senior class last year was our second

057senior class and we just couldn't grab that data between march and june because of the reporting system and the pandemic this year we're back on target and so we're excited in june to see how many more of our kids are seniors now that are taking avid and what the impact will be towards college readiness college and career readiness additionally there is a little snapshot i wanted to give you that btms put together um they talked about the students achieving a 99.5 pass rate on marketing period two while non-avid students had a 69.4 pass rate um and it says the avid students only failed eighth class eight classes that's pretty powerful from btms in middle school with pre-adolescent behavior and so we are tracking lots of different um factors and how and what the impact is

058on avid um dr hamilton want to move into goal number two goal number two is our focused approach to addressing the whole child the whole student making certain that we have systems in place that help uh create this data platform as as well as recognizing that in addition to the academic supports we have to ensure that we are supporting kids socially emotionally and providing them with ample experiences that give them the opportunity to participate in community service activities gives them the opportunities to participate in recreation access to sports programs all those things that help build character and educate the whole child so these indicators that we are now getting ready to show to address uh look at a long-term holistic approach to educating our children and understanding that some of this is stuff that is

059not necessarily measurable you can't measure character but you can look at programs and services that we are putting in place perhaps the standout items on here really are focused around managing for results our mfr process which for those of you who are hearing it the first time is a system that i have developed and shared with our principals for monitoring student progress it helps teachers identify where their children are by using indicators of success and when they expect them to be by the end of the year that's benchmarking benchmarking and establishing targets and then from that target working backwards by creating a series of strategies that help direct instructional uh practices to move students across that continuum and these benchmarks gives us an opportunity to say to teachers these are some different strategies you need

060to utilize and we've created a pretty sophisticated system for helping our teachers use this and by the way i have to say i never mandated mfr i've shared it as a tool i've shared it as an option but i never mandated it it has become the heartbeat of the district for teachers and principals to monitor student achievement data all across the country you're hearing about data data use data you got to make data informed decisions but the fact of the matter is having the data without having the tools and the resources available to you to do something with the data and develop strategies is meaningless so we've now created systems and strategies that teachers can select from their toolkit to move students across that continuum and that includes our data tracker uh dr bc if

061you'll talk a little bit about our data tracker that marries and mirrors our managing for results process this ties state indicators with district indicators and helps us monitor very specific teacher behaviors and student outcomes dr bc okay good afternoon everyone um unfortunately we did not put up the um the chart for you to see that but anyway i'm going to explain to you how that works um how about how that works is that we looked at the data from the test course and my i had a group of folks with me like myself um satish um the principal and marlon and some other people on the team and we looked at the data per building and that's why we called the principals in we looked at their data we look at the classes we look

062at the teachers so that the principals can go back and have some courageous conversations with this with the with the teachers and the teachers can have the current conversation with the parents and the kids and then we will have um schedule a meeting with the superintendent to talk about their data and how they use the mfr process so that's how that whole procedure works out um and it has and i have to say it has been very successful because when we go into the buildings to do the dtsd interviews and we're talking to the students the students are saying um my lex lag level is xyz i score so much in ela and math but my scores could be better they are talking about how much they have and they understand what the alexa score

063is and the parents are also saying the same things so it means that data is not only discussed at the central office but it trickles down to the very students that they can talk about their data they can talk about what they're going to do to improve their scores so that's where the mfr process comes in and there has been a deliberate effort to link all of these systems for the benefit of educating the whole child so nothing is happening in isolation uh even the work around our all students must start thrive series is connected to utilizing various sources of data to inform our instructional practices and makes to make sure that students are well not just academically but that we are addressing their cultural needs we are addressing their social emotional needs uh through

064these various programs we've also identified what we're referring to as the colon fatigue relief kit did you include that in the final version dr gorman we could take a look at the artifacts for uh goal number two if you'd like so let's switch yes let's switch to some of our artifact artifacts that lets us know that we are making progress toward accomplishing that 2025 goal of having an individualized plan for every student and addressing the whole child so we've conducted grade audits these great audits help us to figure out where students having the greatest opportunities for success where our students experiencing the greatest failures in terms of grades how how they are being graded why is that important it's important because it helps us determine which courses students will be eligible for the next year

065and that becomes an indicator of which college and career students are able to assist to to have access to so the alignment of all of these programs and services as we look at educating the whole child is absolutely essential because it has a bigger picture and it's our job as professionals to make those connections for our children so that when they get ready to make application to college or make application to a career of their choice they have all the prerequisites necessary our family and community engagement initiative is huge we know that students are not successful with transforming without engaging families on the implementation and creation of the office of school improvement has been one of the most powerful uh initiatives we put in place in the district because it has bridged the gap between

066home and schools now of course our goal this evening is to report our progress to you toward these goals we are not painting this picture that everything is peachy keen and the work is done there is a journey ahead of us believe me when i tell you there is a journey before us but we have put the systems in place and the indicators of success have indicated that these systems are working because we are moving in the right direction now we were seeing regressions that would suggest that we need to totally retool totally rethink our investment and totally rethink where we put our pr how we treat our priorities but that's not what the data is telling us now there there are some patterns that are hard to explain we had a uh dip in

067our eighth grade math scores but what that data did not tell you is that there were students who were taking pre-algebra algebra at that point and they were not a part of that count so when you put that data out and i and dr gorman can talk about that in greater detail when that data is there it gives you an opportunity to really look at what are the contributing factors as we address the whole child understanding our students have experienced trauma our students have experienced significant transition students who were redistrict for example as part of our growing pains the conversion of our schools to pre-k 8 had an impact on staff and professional development as we provided specialized instruction to make sure that our middle school students were being taught by special content area specialist

068that was a cultural shift in our efforts to deliver instruction that's part of the painting the picture for educating the whole child understanding also that we have students who have significant challenges because of their experience with either being homeless or having a challenge with learning uh english when english is not their first language or having um experiencing conditions and psychological conditions of of poverty and how that impacts learning recognizing our role as educators to make sure we are addressing those needs as well so dr bc wanted to jump in here to hamilton to talk about it i want you to talk about the collaborative uh academic social and emotional learning endeavor right and i'm glad i'm glad you allowed me to do that because that's a big piece of the whole child and i will

069just piggyback on what you said a few minutes ago dr hamilton that we stopped building structures we are now building systems and that is why all these things are in place because when we are gone the system has to be in place that somebody else can come in and and and continue with arcade i don't know jeff if this is just my view but this is blurry on my on my view i i don't know if other people have that same okay um it is but actually okay that's dr hamilton because i know this okay so what i want to talk about today i know that people are talking about um the mental health they want to come in and help us with mental health and all of that but let me tell you something

070our school district is doing a good job on addressing the mental health of a parent and mental health for kids as well as our staff because we know that especially with the pandemic we have been affected by that now we looked at the castle initiative not all schools are doing it in detail some of it they are doing it in pockets now what's a castle initiative it's a collaborative for academic social and emotional learning initiative now in this initiative you have at least five different competencies and the five competencies are as follows as you can see on your screen you have self-awareness social awareness responsible decision-making self-management and relationship skills now how do we use this in our schools so take for example one of our school um principal and i'm going to say that

071about benjamin turner they do all five competencies and how did they do it they what they do they took the chickens assign these themes over two months and example february and march is social awareness month and what they will do is that they have us each who'll have a social and emotional team and the social and emotional team gathers all the resources and the lessons that is created on on on the um castle website and created a bank for the teacher who are doing advisory and um as a result of that these activities are there that teachers can use for their kids when they're doing these initiatives other schools are using it differently based on the needs of their students but at least we have something in place that is district-wide that everybody can use

072and i have to tell you that a lot of our kids a lot of our parents and for teachers are happy that they're using this initiative some people requested more training in this which we are going to continue to do more pd in that because as we move along parents are now i mean coming coming forward and sharing with us what their needs are and it's it and it's deep i've also um form a partnership with the department of mental health and and commissioner um michael orth is definitely working with wjcs to come in to train some of our teachers on how to be mentally youth trainers in our district we also have just inspired who's doing that also so you have two entities who are training on our adults how to be mental healthy

073trainers and that and all that will trickle down into the community i know that wjcs is also training people in the churches and the people in the churches are working with some of our parents in the community on how to address mental health so this is big this is wide this is deep and i've received a lot of thank yous from our parents in the community that they wanted this to happen because at least they might not trust mary but they will trust john and they can go and talk to them about what their issues are so this is how we are overcoming the mental health issues and the social emotional um learning that is taking place in our schools with our kids so all of this is designed to put us in a position

074so that by the year 2025 we will have all the pieces that we need to create an individualized plan for every student and this process that we are engaged in now are the various pieces that will help pave the way to accomplishing that goal this is our status report in that in that regard um our current graduation data um dr bc i'd like you to talk about this because i i asked you to take on the sundown program because i was not pleased with what we were getting and i want you to be able to talk about the results after our conversation yes and i also want to thank marlon for doing these charts because he has been working with me on these two charts but the graduation rates and the the sundown but i

075i also need we should talk about um sundown because just like how gayle was was was i was was high on pre-k um honestly i'm high on sundown and i'm going to tell you why i'm high on sundown it's okay to prepare the kids from very early and i i totally support that but sometimes we got to have those kids who make mistakes in life and want a second chance at something and these kids have been so appreciative of their second chance that they are given that the it grows more and more and more each day we have 111 kids in the sundown program and some of these kids are kids who had given up on coming to school now they are back into the system and if you notice on the chart you will

076see 2020 you see it increases and it moves all the way up 10 11 14 23 of these kids from the program graduated and that goes towards the school's um gpa graduation rate sorry the graduation rate of the schools but the fact is is that we are estimating in june 2021 that we're going to have 23 of four kids from that program graduate and this is like last year we had 20 kids who graduate the year before we have like around like 15 kids who graduated and these are kids who graduated with their diploma and they are very very happy because they never think that they would do that as a matter of fact when dr hamilton kind of give us that challenge i was like really this is tough and then when we had

077that meeting at the border fair with our parents and they showed up with with their kids you know the kids were like nah this is not going to work i've tried it so many times and now these kids are happy and they are sharing it with other um students to come inside the program so we also have in the in in the sundown program we have kids who probably um a small amount of credit like they need one class to graduate or one credit to graduate and from both um steam and from both um denzel washington and they will come over they're still on their roster but they will come over and they will take that class so i have seen where it is so important to have sundown it has been a success and

078i want to thank the board members for voting on that because i thought that it was you know a little bit you know controversial and i want to thank them on that because i know we have tried other things and it didn't work we have the renaissance program we have this we have that and it never worked so they were a little bit skeptical about that but you know what i'm so glad that they all come together and decided that we're going to have this program and it is working and my and the sundown kids they want they have their computer they want the work on my back aren't we going to have summer school we need summer school so they are demanding what they need at one point they were like oh we're done

079with school and now they're demanding what they need for for them to be better and i know we're going to have a huge turnout um this year i mean in june in the graduation rate and i do have to talk with the teachers who work in that program and dr gabby thomas with a counselor in that program they have been working i'm honestly to make sure that these kids get the credits that they need to graduate and on top of that every one of them who graduated in june last year they are now college-bound they are in college taking college courses so that's a big piece so i have to tell you you know i'm not a an energetic person to say things i just stay behind the scenes and do my work but i'm

080excited about the sundown program because our kids are going to college and if we can have if we can save one kid from the street and they go to college it's a lot much more than the amount of kids that graduated all the time that is going into college so i'm happy with that so and we have our we anticipate uh we have gone through our high school graduation uh heist our seniors we've looked at transcripts we've looked at grades and we anticipate that we will be around 83 84 this year it which is right on target with again our board goals um we have to also now i know we're taking a lot of time on this but this is important this is our work this is what we should be talking about we

081spend a lot of time talking about a lot of things that don't necessarily directly impact teaching and learning this is the nitty gritty of what we're here to do so i appreciate your indulgence we can't forget that teachers are also having an experience with covid um and we have been working with hr has done a phenomenal job with reaching out and supporting our teachers and their families who are experiencing covet fatigue mistakes will you talk a little bit about this service for our staff please good evening evening the cova fatigue relief kit is something that was put out by um eap our employment assistance program to provide services to the teachers and the staff in the district to um make them aware of resources that are available right in order for um for us as

082the staff to be there for our students we have to be healthy and in a good space ourselves so just recently i began sharing out um regularly i would say so far it's been two in the past month uh different emails and resources available to staff and they did say i don't have the exact numbers that the outreach from our employees has improved so to help someone else we have to be healthy ourselves so the cobra fatigue relief kit is for staff and their families and their students and this resource really is about uh being well we are doing a district uh wellness day uh in april um devoted to making sure our teachers and our staff members are attending to their own social and emotional wellness so that we can be there for our

083children that is a part of what educating the whole child entails and last but not least goal number three which oh there i wanted to i want to go back to um we got some pre-k data that i want to share before we get to goal three so let's go back to let's go back to to dr gail white wireless for a moment so pre-kindergarten is definitely making waves in goal number two what dr hamilton wanted to share with you today about how we are educating whole child are some steps that we've taken to spearhead work with social emotional learning in our pre-kindergarten department we've actually been loaded for our work across the state and actually now across the country as i got to present to steadman yes oprah stedman today in um a frog

084street presentation about what we're doing with some um social emotional learning so we started in pre-k is really beginning to talk to students about feelings and i know people may think it's very elementary but it begins in pre-k understanding how you feel how do you control those feelings and how do you become a good citizen with the addition of two amazing social workers we have developed our own from scratch social emotional curriculum that every single pre-kindergarten student receives every single week students who are in virtual learning have small we call friendship circles we give all students counseling informal counseling as well as one-on-one once we have identified them our biggest feat i think is our 128 from scratch pathways manual that we created in the pre-kindergarten department this manual which new york state loved in

085our audit helps us identify students who are high risk and will have difficulties throughout their educational career we have created checklists diagnostic tools both digital and anecdotal for these students and then we design specific pathways for each of those students to support their learning both at home and in the classroom our social workers are also providing support for parents we are also making house visits as well as providing parents with the tools to be even better parents at home please visit our web our part on the website where you can see our monthly events that we are having for parents to help them engage with their child be better parents and most of all tend to social emotional wellness in their homes please join um this month and for may for our wellness warrior sessions

086as we have just started a quarterly wellness newsletter in the pre-kindergarten department it's not just about mental it is about physical wellness you will check out coach z our pre-k gym teacher teaching parents about yoga mindfulness working out eating right and our social workers providing all of our families with the supports hotlines and information that they may need so that everybody in our department as well awesomeness so we've covered the gamut from our babies to our seniors and that is the whole child and lastly our smart planning goal which is our district's effort to think current budget and future budget and i have to tell you we have so much to be thankful for i have mentioned before my job i will always advocate for our district and for the needs of our district and

087i think we have some unique needs and i don't think that our state officials and lawmakers are always aware of the nuances that communities experience that being said we've done an extraordinary job and i say we because it is a we it's the board it's the cabinet it's the teachers it's our principals and our parents we've been able to rebuild this district without passing this burden on to our local taxpayer and there has been there have been some consequences as a result of that for instance our ability to raise money gets compromised because we haven't raised our taxes for instance our credit rating gets compromised to some extent because of some mitigating factors around how we utilize fund balance and i'm going to have mr silver talk about some of the districts initiatives that one

088help identify other revenue sources and two how we reduce uh some of our fiscal planning obligations of our fiscal planning so that we are planning smart and we're planning efficiently mr silver you're on mute mr silver i've got this technology down pat don't worry i'm sure you do so there there's been a lot of talk about the cares act uh the cares act in the current budget is we're going to talk about that first and then the cares act as it relates to the 2122 budget so first thing the state did was to take away 3.1 million dollars called a pandemic adjustment then the very next thing they did was give us the cares act restoration well you'd think that that was taking it away and giving it back but there were some strings attached

089when they gave it back they said that we now have to also provide a portion of this money approximately three hundred thousand to all private and parochial school students in all areas and we had to use this money to fund about eight hundred thousand dollars in covert related expenses which we will see on a slide in another minute that green and yellow is just there's there's two different funding sources and i have to thank dr bc for all the work she did in preparing the budgets for this and uh so that we are able to get the money back that they took from us it's not new money but we got it back except for about three hundred thousand we have to give away uh and also i have to thank amy mozelli for her

090cooperation and putting this together next slide please so if we take away the eight hundred thousand and the three hundred thousand we really have a million two less in money available in our state aid and so they gave us back the money but we've lost this we are hoping at some point to get something from the feds to replace this about eight hundred thousand dollars that we have spent on covert related monies but so far we're okay the board earlier in the year directed us to cut about seven and a half million dollars from the budget or from our spending and we have done that and we'll talk about state aid in just a minute and see how that cut has now going to pay benefits going forward next slide so this is how the

091the 2021 uh cares act uh the slide before this and this slide show the way dr bennett conroy uh put together the budget so that the state would approve all of this uh 3.1 million dollars being given back to us and this was uh quite an effort because it had to include all the children who go to private and parochial schools next slide in checking mr silver this is now what we're looking at for 2122. so the state aid run that we already have shows 9.5 million dollars deducted and then 9.5 million dollars coming back to us but we don't know whether the state is going to put any strings on it if they do put strings on it for parochial private school students that will cost about 950 000 or 10 percent of the

092money we got back we don't know that now right now all we know is that we're even they this is where sorry i'm sorry okay this is where the advocacy comes in um where conversations my calls to senator bailey my call to to um senator biaggi office etc this is where it is important for us to understand the role that our various lawmakers and legislators the role that they play so and each member of the cabinet has an interval plays an integral part in making this all make sense because if we don't advocate for ourselves we lose opportunities to have access to these kinds of funds so we need to have them understand why they need to vote on certain bills that are introduced we need to have them understand the circumstances and conditions in

093our district that press the urgency around making sure that the district is made whole and understanding the cost that we incur as a result of covid so i'm on the phone constantly talking to our lawmakers to get them to understand the nuances in our district and our community so that our voice and it's frustrating and sometimes i feel that the efforts are in vain but if we don't stay on that our efforts are in vain if we don't stay on their radar they won't know our needs so when parents ask how can i help you can help by making sure your legislators know what's on the doc what they need to vote on and why they need to vote on it and why mount vernon needs must be addressed by fiscal but through the budget

094the governor's budget proposal i'm sorry ken go ahead i needed to say that on on this slide thank you dr hamilton uh just stay on the other slide before for just a minute so i just want to say that uh we have traveled to albany been on the phone with our legislators this week dr hamilton and i have i think six different zoom meetings with various senators ways and means committee uh we had one yesterday with senator mayer as dr hampton mentioned and we have five more before friday trying to get them just to give us what we absolutely need and what we should be getting okay jeff okay this slide shows how we spent our eight hundred thousand dollars in in covert related money uh things such as uh face shields uh the uh

095separators for the desks the part three-sided partitions that was probably this or is probably the single largest expense and so we just put it in percentages of what we spent but there's uh i have to thank mr pelicio's office and mr pelagio they put together and have kept record of every dollar we have spent on this covered money since last march every dollar and they presented this to us a number of times and uh we put this amy mozelli put this together into this demonstration of of what this all looks like thanks jeff so um okay so in closing um the most important thing we can do is make certain that we are preparing our children and ensuring that they are empowered in such a way that any obstacle they are they may encounter they

096have the tools to get through if the mountain's too big to go over go around and we want to make sure that we maintain our commitment both fiscally politically socially and most importantly academically that we may remain committed to district initiatives that we know have started to yield favorable results and grapefruit for our children so there's a harvest upon us that we have to take advantage of and continue to move in the right direction uh i want to thank all of the members of cabinet and we'll certainly open this to any questions i want to thank all the members of cabinet and our principals who also uh helped us gather these artifacts and data so it wasn't just a bunch of words but artifacts that supported uh and provided you with the evidence of our

097progress to work these goals great i this is this is i'm so impressed with this body of work and i think it's it's so hard um so i want to say first of all kudos to your team to the team for pulling this together the data it looking at the data and sometimes a little small and we probably will want to you know do some summarizing of it but the data is so important i i feel as a board member when i get asked questions and um you know people want to compare us to whatever district and where are you and what have you done and when we see how far we've come while building this the systems right first we had to build a structure and then and then it's the systems and then

098we have to let the systems have a chance to work um and it's quite an amazing layered process it's very it's very involved and so i think getting the appreciation out to the community about the the the amount of work that needs to be done in in a district of our size um is is just phenomenal but i'm i'm really happy to be able to see um the data and i think i you know i i would like to you know put it out to the board to ask questions i think one of the the first and i'll ask just one question then i'll turn it over to the other board members but i i i wanted to know from dr bc like what is the secret sauce with sundown because that to me is

099like someone saying i'm not going to tell you my special barbecue sauce because i'm not going to tell you the recipe because you're going to copy it but i mean i it's it's really quite astonishing what's been able to be accomplished there and you know while well we weren't necessarily any of us or many of us weren't around when those students were coming through we didn't even have the pre-k program but coming through the earlier years in school the ability to help them motivate them and encourage them to get their high school diplomas to keep at it is is just is huge and it's i'm sorry madam president before before bc answers that one of the things that i want to say in response to that is resources yeah and relationships one of the things

100that i've asked bc to do was to make sure every student was heard that no one fell through the cracks no one felt that they were disposable that there was someone responsible for connecting to every child in that program on a consistent regular basis if it meant making the phone call if it meant going to their house there have been occasions that i've gone by and talked to students who have sent me emails and had challenges with their courses or couldn't get certain uh courses that they needed for graduation so it's been a big part of it has been the relationships i'm sorry go ahead bc i wanted to say that at the top of your comments yes and to add to that um trustee miller is our modern president i should say um is

101that you to put the right people on the bus on the right bus and i'm going to tell you why you have to pick your staff carefully when you're dealing with students who are who don't want to come back who are depressed you have other issues and i have to tell you we have a great staff of teachers administrators working with these kids because i mean and also the staff from central office who goes over there and meet with the kids meet the staff be part of the be involved you create no silos because when the students see the superintendent coming over or us coming over from the cabinet and sitting down and talking with them we have brother mohammed we have people from the outside that comes in and meet and talk with our

102kids we have the police academy that goes in there and sit and talk with them to their program so it's a whole is a whole bunch of the content resources and people that really really cares and show them that they're here together that makes that make it work if you don't have those folks you can forget it and kids know when you're lying they know when you're faking they know when you're not serious about what you're doing for them and the parents when you when you talk to the parents it's it's like about transparency the parents will tell you what the kids are doing you know and without even the kids knowing that the parents are are talking about them or people would say riding on no but because they know that they're going to

103get the help from us you know and again some of those parents who have issues will say to us i need outside help for me as a parent so that i could have the child and we don't give them resource we don't give them references on a piece of paper we pick up the phone recall these references and said xyz is coming into you can you have this parent so that's what we do we do this um communication and um our parentness and have been great i know alicia um will work with that team as well and and she knows a lot of you know from the network association how they can help their parents so it's a whole as i said right people in the right place who is going to wrap their arms

104around them even though they are grown people and they behave um like nobody they're not going to listen to anybody when by the time you calm them down and talk to them you could see that you know they are real teddy bears and they need love you need help so that's how we do that okay thank you you're welcome great great work um trustee mcgowan i know you had your hand up earlier i didn't see it but i uh someone told me your hand was up so i wanted to give you a chance to go first i did but before i go um trustee saunders had some questions in the chat about sundowns what's interesting oh okay uh how many are seniors how many of our 111 students are seniors bc i'm not sure most

105of them are though but i'm not sure i don't have the count but i could provide you with that information tomorrow okay yeah is there an accelerated program for students that are aging out yes so we still are for plato um and we are still offering alternative scheduling for students who are of age and behind credit um we had a meeting today as a matter of fact on on those students all hands are on deck to make sure our students are getting what they need to get the credits and coursework to graduate on time to get those numbers up but more importantly it's about using data that's available to us so we're not waiting until the 11th hour to try to remediate and educate those kids we have indicators along the way that suggest that

106there are students who are not likely to complete their four-year course of study on time and we have to use that data better we have to hold people more accountable for meeting with their counselees reviewing those credit transcripts and having conversations with students and teachers about students being appropriately scheduled uh what about the wizard of oz and under credit so that's that so i did i get all of your questions trustee yes you did thank you okay you're welcome great so trustee mcgowan sure thanks thanks for the update uh dr hamilton and everybody uh i know we've talked about some of these indicators since we set up the goals 18 months ago but this is the first fully comprehensive presentation to touch every single point so i appreciate that and look forward to future updates

107i think it's worth pointing out uh how this is very longitudinal as you say the word right this is very intentional when we when we had these series of conversations as a board in in the fall we had several different retreats talking about them and we wanted a five-year plan and we were very focused on a plan that was uh longer than any of our board terms and longer than you know some of these some of the people that worked on this in 2019 won't be here in 2025 maybe it's not we that's won't be here anymore but the point is we are very focused as a board on sustainable long-term impacts because for so many years this city and and the school district was you if you're always playing catch-up you're never catching up

108you cannot address the problems of this year this year you just can't you'll never ever catch up and if you approach education that way you're dooming the kids to failure because if you spend all you you can't spend all your time remediating right it doesn't work exactly you have to build yeah um and i think we've done a great job of having priorities from the very beginning from seven years ago when we started this of starting with pre-k knowing that the full gains we see from investing those millions of dollars in pre-k won't be seen for several years i know we're already seeing some of them yep and it's very positive and i appreciate dr white wallace and her her work um but really it's going to be 10 years before we really understand that

109the impact we're having now 12 15 years um but i just want to say kudos to all and it's it's been very rewarding i have to say as a board member to work with dr hamilton and his staff that shares that that we didn't have to convince anybody anything that the as a board and administration from the very beginning we understand this is a long-term thing and it's got to survive any of us trustees on the board it's got to survive dr hamilton when he retires 40 years from now all of us um so i really think that we've the goals are aligned with that and it's i appreciate seeing the results looking at it that way because that's how we all as the city and community have to look at it for this to

110work um so anyway mike i have questions about the i ready data so i don't know if that's mr stevenson or are you dr hamilton but um i'm a little i have to well i have a specific question and then a kind of a broader question my specific question is for the 20 for this year's data the 20 and 21 school year data for the how is that data including only students who completed the i ready exam or is that including students who never took it at all the show was a zero for kids who didn't log in who didn't take it didn't participate that just reflects students who completed the assessment and within the window okay um i i imagine you don't have the numbers at your fingertips but i'd be very interested to

111see the breakdown of in-person versus full-time remote uh uh dr bobbles do you do you know that offhand i know you looked at it but i don't know if you would know it offhand i do not dr hamilton but we could certainly pull that together okay and share it out awesome um yeah my more general question is uh it seems to me i mean i'm just going to be blunt i'm not impressed with iready numbers and the trend over the last three years it seems very static to me uh hasn't really gone really up or down very much it seems within the margin of error for the last of the last three years and my i'm just a little confused at that because i know we have other indicators our test scores have gone up

112clearly our graduation rates have gone there's been other indicators that have gone up over the last three or four years so why is the i ready data all seem flat to me and the other indicators are going up what does that tell us well one of the things i'll give dr bobbles an opportunity to respond to that as well one of the things particularly with this year's assessment is and i think i prefaced this uh a meeting of maybe two meetings ago um that i don't know how reliable it is because of the environment that we're in right now uh so we while we can measure attendance we can't measure engagement so the the reliability that i ready here for has provided i have some concerns about in terms of other uh measures and others

113and other indicators of success one of the things that we are challenged by as a community with a very high transient rate is making certain that when we look at uh first grade to second grade progress or second grade to third grade progress are we looking at the same students so sometimes that static data does not necessarily measure or compare uh the same student from one mark from one period to the next because we have such uh large transit transit such a large transient population which is another reason why we have started moving with jet light speed on creating district made assessments because it will give us a better opportunity to access more frequently and in closer intervals rather than beginning of the year and end of the year dr baubles you want to add

114to that certainly dr hamilton thank you for the opportunity to do so just as dr hamilton mentioned what i can share in terms of common assessment development and design is something i was recently a part of with our humanities department chairs for our three high schools over a series of meetings in the last month essentially for our ela our english language arts and social studies courses for grades 9 through 12 students our department chairs have embarked upon quite a bit of leadership in terms of really working with their individual faculty members and as groups to be able to develop these assessments to be administered across these particular courses that are taught at all three high schools so rather than just relying upon the assessments that are part of the programs that we've purchased we're looking

115to extend the utility of those by complementing these common assessments with those additional metrics so just as i ready is one point to look at in terms of data i think the more data we can collect the better one of the event i think the very many astute points that dr hamilton had made at our last board meeting together was that value of the baseline data that nye said will provide ultimately when we administer to our students this spring over the course the summer or the fall depending upon how that takes shape so i ready is one measure right it's not to be completely relied upon singularly and i think it's something for us to keep a watchful eye on in terms of how truly reliable it is once we are back more so in

116a traditional in person classroom setting and one last thing on on your point trustee mcgowan the i ready data banned students put students in certain bands or clusters so the movement is actually greater than it looks like on the bar graph because it moves students from above grade level below grade level uh one or two to one or two levels above on below or one or two years below grade level so within those four bands you could have a significant movement and it shows the more students that are on grade level is a more impressive bar than the two bars that are below on those charts meaning on or below one or two years below because it is very challenging to move those students that are uh one or two years below grade level to

117the bar on the other end so while the bars looks static the movement within those four bars is really quite significant because the effort to move two years below to being on grade level for example is quite significant yeah that's i mean that's always going to be the case i'm just i'm just reacting to the data as it's presented and it doesn't really tell me much if i'm looking at the irate data for the last three years i don't know what i'm supposed to glean from these charts given that they seem to be fairly flat to me that's all that's my point understood but i know there's other metrics that trending upwards at least according to the graphs i saw tonight that's not trending anywhere so i'm trying to interpret that data for example i

118thought it was i didn't have a chance to look at it carefully i'll look at it more closely when we get to actual slides but uh when you have the irate of data broken down by each grade like one at a time right you could see you could see the gaps you know start to grow as kids get older which makes sense like i understand why that happens over time um because the longer you go below grade level the harder it is to catch up obviously so i understand that trend and that that was a more interesting graph to me i'm just so i'm not i'm not reacting really positively or negatively i'm just trying to understand that i understand um probably the the hardest work before us right now honestly is when we look

119at our students who had the full pre-k experience that cohort of students that we had four years ago making certain that as students come through our pre-k mk experience and inter first and second that our curriculum is is spiraling in such a way that teachers are not re-teaching skills that those pre-k and k teachers have already covered because kids are being more advanced now and that is why the curriculum work is so important and vertical articulation is so important so teachers are can readily receive these students who are coming in already knowing their sight words already knowing numeration already knowing phonemic awareness to some extent so the curriculum work that we have to do simultaneously now is about ramping that work up and ensuring that that vertical uh articulation happens so i know you got

120it in advance um so the hopefully the charts that were not as as uh viewable in the powerpoint the the hard copies you have hopefully you can see them better yeah madam president i see madame uh trustee munoz patterson yes ma'am hey so i just have a quick and just okay so as a side note um my daughter is in the pre-k four at friendship for tots and i cannot tell you like she came home the other day she sat down and asked me she goes you're gonna teach me how to read and i was like i don't like your threatening to want to voice young lady but she was like so like this is what we're doing today like she came home like site where like she's really like it's a little scary um

121but anyway so that's a whole other situation but so in terms of i love the i love the bigger picture i love seeing where we are i guess my only concern is where are we in reference to or what rollback do we expect in terms of covet like because i feel like this year we're gonna i feel like we have we're expecting that there's gonna be bless you we're expecting there's gonna be um sorry i have a four-year-old sitting at my feet um we're expecting there's gonna be some kind of like i mean there has to be regression right are we expecting i guess i want everyone to be prepared like what are the what are we expecting so that way nobody looks at it and goes you know what that's a great question and

122i don't know i really don't know um i do know that we have to really reinvent summer school we have to really reinvent our uh saturday program and our academies that are designed for mediation i'm expecting the governor is going to be putting forward a huge initiative around summer school that may mirror frankly year-round schooling i'm expecting something like that that that may very well come forward um but i don't i don't trust you i don't i really don't know i don't know if i should we should say kids are going to lose a whole year or we should expect a six-month regression or i i don't know and i don't know if we're gonna see it all this year it may be next year before we really see what that regression looks like uh

123in terms of getting kids back in a traditional environment and get assessment data that helps us really benchmark it yeah i just think as a parent and again i don't know if all the parents are feeling the same anxiety i'm feeling but like i just keep every time something else comes up i'm like oh and you know god forbid something comes in where you know my son has something and he gets like a 40 on something just because he wasn't paying attention and i'm like oh my god you got a 40 and he's like yeah but i just wasn't doing whatever and i'm like you're not allowed to get 40 you know like because i automatically it sends me into like this total tailspin of like oh my gosh what is it what's gonna happen

124am i gonna have to like i don't know start sending him to saturday school or whatever it is i just don't and i know everyone's helping the same i assume at least from the parents i'm talking to are having a lot of the same feeling so yeah i think you're here i'm having those feelings too i don't know it's even hard to think about how to plan because we don't really know what we're going to experience or but what i do know is that i think we have to anticipate is going to look differently i think our calendar may start to look different i think our school day may start to look different um i think we have to really be creative and anticipate that we've got a lot we're going to have a lot

125of work to do do you think this you mentioned it but do you think this could be a a launching pad or or a or a platform on which districts can transition to something closer to a full year i do i do i think i'm um i'm on the task force with the commissioner um i have been and i hope i don't get assassinated for this but i've been an advocate for year-round schooling for a long time i i've studied year-round schooling and i think there's tremendous benefit to year-round so aside from covet i think there's tremendous benefit to year-round round schooling uh but it's a dramatic shift uh parents you know people have to learn to plan their lives differently um so i think if we even approach that um having that conversation with

126our unions of course our parent community and looking at how we could gradually address that um but i think this is a unique opportunity to really do things differently yeah i'm already on record as as being a supporter of that so it's no surprise but but yeah i uh i know i appreciate that and lots of changes yes well and that doesn't you know and the year-round school doesn't necessarily just address regression it can redress it can address acceleration so for the students who want to go quickly and who are you know maxing out on ap courses etc and looking at one of our students right now [Music] you know it's in a great opportunity i mean i know students are taking college courses for college credit now within within our high school which is

127great but i think it also it offers uh opportunities all across the board yes yes students can finish their high school experience in three years instead of four you know with that that kind of schedule and then if they take enough college courses they can finish their college faster too right and more economically do any other trustees have any comments they would like to make no okay all right one last item madam president under the superintendent's report and that's our efforts to reinvent our new standard for in-person learning um and we're re-branding this because our schools are open so we're calling it new standards and guidance to inform in-person learning and what are we doing to welcome more of our students back because our schools are open um so this is a very brief presentation

128um there was a committee that worked together that was comprised of parents excuse me union representation from both teachers and administrators group as well as the superintendent's cabinet uh dr gorman was my designee on this i intentionally did not um share my work with the superintendents group because i wanted the work to be our get or get organic and i wanted to fuse the idea so i'm on a committee with uh area superintendents and i wanted to see how much our work was aligned and they were very much aligned with one exception and that is around the schedule for reopening the committee made a recommendation uh that really expedites reopening school which i support i had a longer uh more elongated uh schedule in mind but other than that the recommendations i'm effectively accepting uh

129and recommending to the board in their totality dr gorman um dr hampton i put the why on the first slide on purpose because i think that sometimes with with with everything that we're dealing with 24 7 over the last year um and you know this is it's it's been a year it's been a solid year um coming up this week when you close schools you know and i actually have a flashback slide from that in this presentation quickly but the why continues to resonate with with our work and and i think the why was properly explained in the last presentation it's about the children adults are close second but our business is children right and and getting those children in our schools the face-to-face learning we know is important and the absence of them while

130they're on computers is part of it but i think our goal and the why we're trying to reopen and get kids back to in-person learning on a regular basis really drives our decisions um and you know takes into consideration all the other factors and there's so many of them um but but why are we after getting back into school um and that that's really the the question that has to be answered when we as we do this work um so having said that um the committee came up with three basic phases uh to continue to push more students back into our schools i mean we're reopened but now we want to make almost like a a public cry get into the schools as fast as you can so on march 22nd our new phase one

131will include pre-k the second graders and our graduating seniors we want our seniors into school it's their last year of school before they go out to college or career and it's important that they're with us and we can celebrate their accolades and make sure that they graduate on time our phase two recommendations is for right after our spring break so the 22nd is the week before spring break and like we've done in the past that's sort of like work out the kinks with the first group see how it goes prepare and do some more work if we have to over the break um and then bring in our next group which is the three through eight and then our phase three the following week on grade nine to eleven while our remote learning is reduced

132it is still available for those who require these accommodations our eventual goal is to get to the point where our kids are coming back fully face to face so this is based off of cdc essential elements of safe schools regardless of the level of community transmission we are using the five key mitigation strategies essential to the safe delivery of impersonal construction masks physical distancing hand washing respiratory etiquette cleaning and contact tracing um and so why now what's changed since our first phasing well there's a there's a number of things and putting it all together this seems like a good time to make that second push um high fidelity routines are in place right so people are you know in the beginning filling out a questionnaire or taking temperature was a major task now it's a

133regular routine wherever you go you know a doctor's office a grocery store master are essential routines are essential questionnaires to be filled out taking temperatures and monitoring we are embarking in diagnostic cova testing in lieu of random testing we are looking to conduct testing in our school and offer referrals to diagnostic testing diagnostic testing defined by the cdc is any student teacher a staff member who exhibits symptoms of covid19 at school so the testing we believe is an important component that we didn't have in place before spring brings fresh air right open the classroom windows and get the air moving um get the kids out if you can when possible and we have a lot of space in some buildings not as much space in other buildings but let's get the kids outside and together

134um in in the in the fresh air partitions and shields are in place we have ordered for all students in the district that is a different prototype um that is sort of ramping it up and um and more staff and community members daily are becoming vaccinated so we're getting a better better grip on things and while this is far from over the pandemic and that's why we're putting the online option still in place in the end it's still parents choice at this point for this school year um we we do encourage them to get back um we want to we of course are continuing our cleaning and disinfecting practices this is a slide that i flashed back to last year and march 20 march 5th we did this presentation for the board dr hamilton um

135and we broke out the clorox 360 machines uh and the mitigation strategies that we are doing um that was a year ago and in a lot of ways i was very um front forward thinking uh because we were right spot on in how we were starting our mitigation strategies um and you could see that i just took this slide and just changed the title but it is one of the slides from our our reopening uh presentation from last um past early may i believe i don't know if you got uh if you how many of you were able to watch the uh panel discussion last week uh where we had the county doctors on and our uh environmental specialist it was a very the feedback i got from that has just been extraordinary even people

136who don't work in the district uh were on because the county shared the information as well and uh we got some really good information one of the things that i wanted to know was specifically around the use of barriers i knew what i was reading i knew what the cdc was saying i knew what colleagues were saying but i wanted an environmentalist and our environmental specialist to be able to share with me is that a sound uh barrier a an appropriate barrier in the classroom to help mitigate the spread of covet and to make sure that the quality of the air does not get compromised by doing so so he has come on site and conducted studies and confirmed that we have confirmed that the guidance is clear it's six-speed or a protective divider um

137now we have already made provisions for up to fifty percent of our students and we have not hit those numbers so i don't think there's anything that we really need to do drastically on our part right now to get students back in school we want parents to know that the cdc and all the medical experts are clear schools are the safest place for kids to be right now there are no cases or very minimal cases documented across the country of infection happening in schools cases kids have come to school where they have been infected from other uh events family events social gatherings things of that sort uh in mount vernon we have no documented cases there's one potential case that i that could have happened in school but there's no evidence that it actually did

138uh just people uh people who i tested positive believe that they got it from someone else but uh the circumstances which they described makes it virtually it refutes all the evidence but nonetheless just to err on the side of caution we really have no evidence that school is a place where the virus is spreading now i will say this when we are opening our doors and encouraging parents to send students back and parents want some kind of guarantee that their kids will not get covered i can't give you that guarantee and i'm not going to misrepresent i can't guarantee you that unless you can guarantee me you won't send kids to school with covet if every parent and every employee guaranteed me they wouldn't come to school with covet i could guarantee you you wouldn't

139catch covert in school but it's a dynamic disease that you can't parents can't guarantee that staff can't guarantee that and i can't guarantee that but what i can tell you is that we will use all available guidance appropriate ppe social distancing to mitigate anything associated with the transmission of covet 19 in our classrooms um so to wrap things up one of the things that we talked about was the importance of maintaining the wellness wednesdays for this year um not next year and i'll give you a quick slide on on what our goal is this is sort of like a preview this is like a ramp up get ready for fall 2021 as we look at the next three and a half months of school so the structure will be a little bit different on the

140wednesdays teachers will actually and friends will work to schedule individual time with students for part of the day as well as using um other parts of the day to continue the professional learning opportunities um without face-to-face regularly those you know you we you can't call out for a sub to go to a workshop because the kids are virtual right so how do you get that professional learning in so that paradigm has shifted um we want to maintain the connections for wellness wednesdays for the children and continue to continue professional learning opportunities lastly as we head into the spring um imagine the fall we want to share that we are actively planning to have all students back in our schools five days a week next year in order to accomplish this goal we are encouraging all

141students to come back to school during our spring increasing in-person learning plan is a means to effectively transition back to full-time face-to-face learning we are committed to closing the achievement gap and meeting the needs of all of our students which goes back to the initial why are we trying to continue to move kids and get them back into some type of normal learning environment um there are some folks who think we shouldn't open until september and some folks thinking we shouldn't open until everybody is vaccinated we are moving forward with bringing students back in for full-time face-to-face instruction so that we can get our students back to some degree of normalcy and help us define what our new normalcy will be in the months and years ahead of us um so this is our plan

142we've already started uh with the petitions unfortunately that panel discussion garnered support from the county uh they will help us uh offset the cost of some of those partitions that we've purchased for our students we have enough petitions already for our phase one students um the second order uh will be going in to prepare for our second round of in-person students so by the time we get to phase three we will have partitions in every single classroom we're starting with our 12th graders at the secondary level for the reasons dr gorman mentioned but it also gives us a cohort of students to look at what does transitioning in the hallways look like um when we bring all students back uh what what adjustments do we need to make for supervision to make make certain that

143students are social distancing and also how do we take full advantage of the um testing covet testing so that our seniors can have their full senior year experience there is no vaccination approved yet for students for children um we don't anticipate that will be available until uh the latter part of this year i understand there's a vaccination that will be available for students from 15 to 17 and then the early part of next year i understand the they're on target to approve a vaccination for kids from 5 to 12 for those who who may want to do that but we'll have more information there'll be more data available about how people are responding to the current vaccine so this may be an entirely different conversation the more we are accustomed to the vaccination on being

144available and distributed so so what so when is the plan to phase out the remote the remote instruction will be phased out completely in september when we come back in september um right now i think there will still be occasions where we will need to quarantine i think there will still be people who are traveling who are not vaccinated who will be infected and other uh be exposed to the virus and other environments and will need to quarantine so i think we need to continue to offer remote learning for that purpose but in september uh it is my expectation that there will be no remote options now things could change data could change information could change but right now the plan is not to offer remote instruction in september okay does anyone else have any

145questions or comments regarding uh oh and one other thing too i just got a reminder i'm sorry madam president uh summer school will be in person this year um so our plan for summer school is to ramp up uh the number of students who are eligible and to offer that as an in-person option we are looking at outdoor instructional space as well for the summer uh even as we head into the spring but certainly for the summer looking at outdoor instructional space as a way to to entice encourage uh students to come back in a safe way okay great trustee white yes dr hamilton you said that the social distancing won't be affected if they have the petitions around because i know some of our classroom can't hold but maybe 18 or 20 students and

146they cannot be six feet apart at that with so many kids that is correct so the guidance says that if you use partitions you don't have to have six feet and there's debate about three feet versus six feet without barriers right i'm not comfortable with doing that right now quite frankly um so i would not suggest removing barriers and going to three feet although there are some districts that have done that um i think we should err on the side of caution and use barriers and recognize that as our mitigating factor in the classroom particularly where the classrooms are small as you know as you know interesting okay can i piggyback on that question absolutely uh so um the partitions will be provided by the district yes ma'am and they will remain in the school

147great question thank you for asking that i forgot to mention that yes the petitions will remain in school they will be cleaned in school and disinfected at the end of each day when the classrooms are cleaned uh students will not be permitted to take them home [Music] madam president trustee mitchell heyo so our guest as as a parent that has my children are remote learning and i think it was important that you stated it's not going to be phased out to september because the first thing of course we're going to think as parents is we're going to think oh my god they're phasing it out by april and something like that um so two things you're talking about by basically i guess you said i think we said i think your schedule quote for by

148the end of april we should be pretty much back in full swing all right now last i checked and if i am talking out of place here let me know our classrooms are already a good extent at capacity with just the amount of kids that are in there without social distancing how do we explain to our parents how we're going to still maintain social distancing according to cdc standards and guidelines while we still have classrooms that are already at capacity without social distancing that's my first question um so we're there are very few classes at capacity and most uh even though our survey data suggested that we would be at 50 capacity most of our classrooms are not at 50 capacity which is how the six the spacing the social distancing at six feet how

149that was mapped out in each classroom um the six feet will not be honored because in lieu of six feet we will be using partitions now in instances where we just hit that 50 mark for instance in terms of those parents who said they would send their kids back we would actually still be able to maintain six feet in those classrooms because they have been configured based on 50 capacity if we exceed that 50 capacity um then we will still be okay because we'll have barriers but if we don't we're actually exceeding the standard because we will have six feet and barriers in the classrooms so will masks still remain mandatory or do that okay i'm sorry for cutting you off but i should have said that earlier masked will absolutely still be required okay

150um i think pretty much that that was that was the the first thing that jumped out at me uh that i wanted to get clarity on okay okay trusty white what uh will children be allowed to play outside so this is the springtime and lunch period will it be the lunch will still be brought to them or will they be going to the lunchrooms so we talked about that with principles today it will depend on their capacity um so principals have the option um if they have the space to put students in the cafeteria on individualized desks like some of the schools have they can do that and have the social distance and guidance in place they will there will be some schools based on their enrollment that will have enough partitions that they could

151put in the cafeterias as well so that's an option and then lastly they could continue to uh serve lunch in the classroom for those students so we really did give principals the autonomy based on their building configuration and their numbers to provide lunch breakfast and lunch as they deem most appropriate within those guidelines because i think kids are missing out on a lot of socialization of this so if they're allowed to go out in the playground with their masks on and socialize with their friends i think that's a good idea we actually had uh students go out today it was the nicest day we've had so far um so there were a couple of principals who emailed me and said you know is it already if i let kids out if they keep their masks

152on and i told them absolutely they could they could do so okay all right okay i have one question i just i'm i'm a little confused over the petitions can you hear me yes so the elementary school the children's are in the class all day you know they're in the same classroom but when you get to the high school how would that petition work if you have students go into class go into different classes between periods will someone clean the petitions in between periods or do that how does that work we actually talked about that dr gorman you want to share with the committee recommended on that um that did come up as one of our questions as well and the committee address that um go ahead dr gorman won't steal your thunder are you

153talking specifically about partitions yes high school secondary students actually we talked we talked about high school students and michael could add in on this as well um the use of wipes and having kids using wipes um as a and you know in the beginning that wasn't was not um an approved practice now it is um and it's okay that that kids when they leave they take a wipe and they wipe their petition down the last thing we want is them carrying it with them um on their own so the students will wipe their petitions yes madam president my uh trustee mcgowan's had his hand up a few times thank you uh okay more questions about the partitions uh who who ordered the partitions who made the decision of what kind of partitions to get are

154we getting the same petitions for kindergarteners as high schoolers there's a lot of questions around these right because i i've seen some of them look phenomenal some of them look like prisons the poor kids can't even see out of them so has anybody pretended to be a five-year-old and sat down behind one of these partitions and it actually works okay i'll resist that there was a real good punch line there that i'm gonna pass up on uh mr pelicio you wanna you wanna uh take that question since you ordered them yes thank you dr hamilton for the opportunity um so the petitions are the same for all grade levels they are polycarbonate they were they're approved our environmental expert actually sat with me behind partitions in home school and we measured carbon dioxide um transmissions

155on how breathing would be if there if they would have enough oxygen coming from above and around them so all those were within standards and um we did not put a five-year-old behind them that's for sure but um so i believe that it's a standard piece of equipment that is used across the united states at this point it is has a has a fire rating because it is polycarbonate they do not allow plexiglass so we we are within standards of what we purchased and and what about my main concern is auditory is is can can the kids hear behind the partitions the teachers talking when they're 25 feet away from them i mean there's challenges to masks and anything you put in front of anybody who's talking so that's going to be a challenge but

156i believe that the district will address it accordingly now are we going to man sorry go ahead dr hamilton uh i think uh your to your point i think it would be misleading to tell people that to tell parents that that's not going to be an issue when you have a mask and a barrier teachers are going to have to project students are going to have a challenge with asking questions i'm thinking about the student that may be a little timid and may not have a loud voice and may not project as much as as another so teachers are going to be need to be comfortable with moving around the classroom to be in proximity to some of those students but that is something that we've we've thought about um and it is something that

157we think our teachers will have to be able to adjust to uh once our students are in person are we going to are we going to just put in all the barriers on the scheduled deadline you know when we're scheduled to everybody back in right away or are we going to wait and see i mean because if only 50 of the kids are showing up anyway then why put the barriers in if we don't need them we're already socially distanced um so we have we've we have some petitions that are in all the classrooms anyway if you remember when we had our reopening plan we made sure that there were petitions in every classroom because we anticipated there would be students who were still having a difficult time with adjusting and getting accustomed to wearing

158the mask all the time so classrooms already had them um our goal is to have a petition for every student and i hear your point what if we don't need them i think we will always need them i think that it will add a degree of confidence for our parents if we are if we have them available i think the worst thing we can do is have a need for them and not be able to acquire them um because they're ordered because everybody in the nation's ordering them right now um and we want to make sure that we our supply meets our demand patterson oh sorry sorry i have a couple more questions um can we uh obviously we've done lots of environmental testing about theoretical air quality that it will theoretically not be diminished

159right and we can keep track of that what is the plan once the kids are actually back in the building what's our follow-up monitoring going to look like to make sure that what we projected is not going to be air quality issue is we're right that it's not an air quality issue after the kids are all back uh dr lynch has actually proposed that he come in and do random tests once students are present in the classroom that we measure that with cross ventilation opening windows he actually advised against opening the classroom door we thought that would be a smart thing to do he actually advised against that um so he will serve as an uh he will continue to serve on a consultancy basis to monitor air quality as students come back in and

160as classroom populations increase in size yeah i'm specifically concerned about the places in our district that don't have windows that can open right yes but that can't happen and there are you're absolutely right there are some small group classrooms that don't have windows uh where they do pull out instruction um dr lynch is absolutely he is uh and we expect and he has proposed that he will come in and test the air quality in environments like that all right last question for now is um do we have an estimate of what percentage of our staff is vaccinated um we put out a survey and the governor has first he said that we needed to gather this information and then we were advised that that was a hipaa violation and we could not ask people that

161question so based on the data we have we only had what was it joe uh 700 people responded and 238 had the vaccine so between excuse me between the people that had it or had an appointment to get one it was a little bit more than half the people that responded as of when um about two weeks ago yes i do just have to put a plug in there for the that we remind everybody we do have a special accommodation right from the state the facility in yonkers is open only for residents of yonkers and mount vernon to go get vaccinated i've been tracking it the wait times are i mean it's relatively easy to get an appointment easier than it is in other facilities uh and once you're actually there the process is very

162fast so i just personally encourage people to as soon as they're eligible to go get that taken care of and there we have special that's a special thing that's happening in mount vernon that not all towns have access to that's true trustee patterson you had a question yeah i just in terms of the partitions and um so my son's classroom has extra partitions in addition to the ones that the um district had because we bought extra ones um because we were concerned so a few of the parents bought extra ones and i asked his teacher how she feels about how she can hear and if the kids can hear and the first thing i said is do you have issues hearing the kids or the kids have issues hearing you and the first thing she

163asked is whether my son asked if she if he told me that she's always asking him to repeat themselves so clearly there are definitely issues with hearing but it's partially the mask and the partition and her mask and she's stuck in front of the classroom on a computer and the kid could be all the way at the back of the room behind a partition with a mask as well um so just in terms of again expectations like i will say in terms of our expectations it did make me feel more comfortable then i knew that we had more partitions so i felt a little more comfortable sending him in the beginning um but yeah so clearly um enunciation and then you know speaking is an issue trustee turn quest jones i think i think uh

164uh jeff fred also had his friend you had your hand up i did i wanted to ask dr hamilton they have not made it mandatory for teachers to get vaccinations yet they have not and they probably won't why why do you say that um because there there's been uh some considerable debate about whether or not it was permissible by law to mandate uh teachers to be vaccinated um then there was some talk about whether or not that would be a part of once it became available a part of required inoculations for students to to get um to register for school um so there is a legal debate on that question right now but so far we cannot mandate it we thought we could in the beginning uh but we cannot thank you the the question

165i have is um in regards to the auditoriums and um in the gymnasiums uh how is that going to look thank you the the gymnasiums we are currently using them um and we've been able to do so successfully as we increa increase enrollment with our in-person students i'm expecting more of those classes will be conducted outside um i do not anticipate that auditoriums will be used right now for large gatherings there is still a limit of a maximum of 200 people in any social gathering so pulling together students in the auditorium for an assembly um based on the way i interpret the the law would be a social gathering so because we would exceed that if we tried to do something of that nature it would not be covered by the current provisions if people

166principals needed to pull together small groups in auditoriums and where they could spread them out uh with their masks that would be appropriate that would be fine um but larger than 200 people we would not be able to do right now one question yes ma'am just to might might um have had have let me see have we made certain that all schools windows will open so thank you um trustee so to the extent that we're aware of any issue with a particular window or a group of windows we have a registered vendor window repair systems that has a proprietary balance system that um works really well so if i know about it it will operate thank you um i'm asking um for assistance from both the custodial staff and the and the building administration and

167it's been working well with dr hamilton's guidance i know you've had it covered okay i asked this one quick question one last thing really fast and this to mike um regarding opening windows and closed doors for a fact if you open a window and you don't open up another one and the door is closed the air really does not circulate it just blows right past the door or window and it doesn't come in so we're either going to talk about opening the top and bottom of window or we're going to open up more than one so that they can actually be ventilation if you open it with a closed door the windows there's never going to come in doesn't do anything so he is rational i'm sorry go ahead michael so we do have to

168be a little careful with fire regulations as far as classroom doors there's code that classroom doors are to remain closed there might be some um potential waiver in in the covered world but for the most part classroom doors remain closed we will open the windows and we have you know an amazing filtration system on all of our rooftop and air handling units with high density filters so i think we'll be able to achieve the the air quality that everybody's looking for and with dr lynch's help um we'll be able to ventilate the classrooms appropriately and one last thing uh dr lynch's point on the classroom doors being open is if there is a case of infection it expands the opportunity for exposure because because it is it can be airborne if it's in the classroom

169across the hall and somebody is infected there and the door is open at the potential for it to blow across the hall into another classroom expands the potential exposure um so that was his rationale for not opening doors which i thought like you it made sense to open the door so if you get some air movement i'm doing an elmo on all of us all right very well that concludes the superintendent's report um great thank you so much thank you and i again my apologies it was so long tonight that's right i mean it was just very important information we need to know i want the community to know that we are creating relative to the first presentation that we are creating systems and tracking measures and we are making progress it's it's too slow

170for a lot of people but it's steady and this is the thing where to what uh trustee mc owen said you know slow and steady we'll win the race here we can't change things overnight so the important thing is that we do it correctly and we do it sustainably so in in in last comment on the reopening plan everyone just needs to understand that it's nothing's going to be perfect and everything has changed and it will remain changed for quite some time so we just have to um i'm very impressed with what we've done from the very beginning i mean from the first months of the virus in terms of sanitizing and uh managing you know adhering to protocol cdc protocols and i think you know we've gotten better at it i just i also

171think that it's a tremendous amount for our teachers and principals administrative staff to have to monitor it's just so many additional things while you're trying to teach but i the fact that we really have not had school transmission is is a huge testament to both what the experts are saying about it's safer for the children to be in schools and also to our adherence to the cdc guidelines so kudos to the team for doing that um all right uh i don't i don't know if anyone has a committee report and if you do if anyone will listen to you but i'm really happy but i'm i'm really happy to put out there i do want to first ask um uh trustee force and if she has any comments she'd like to make since there's a

172lot that uh pertains to her school experience which is certainly her senior year is coming to an end so would you like to make any comment trustee forsen yeah um those are actually gonna be my questions um so two main things number one as you said um it's our senior year it's march and we're all wondering about senior activities like prom and graduation and senior trip and it's still a pandemic yeah but um is there any way any of that could happen because we're really nearing june and we're all kind of jittery and hoping something's gonna happen so you know raise morale yeah so i met with the high school principals to talk about what the uh senior experience would be like um my directive was that they all if what one did they all

173have to do they didn't have to do the same activity but if they were gonna have a problem that everybody was gonna have a problem if they were gonna have in person graduation everybody has to have a personal graduation so right now as it stands we are planning for in-person graduations we are open to senior trips providing the trips are going to ensure social distancing and that they're two places that will also recognize social distancing and we are also open to proms providing venues are cleared to offer proms so as far as the school end is concerned and i did get a question about whether or not i was open to having a prom on site if venues could not post and i'm certainly open to that i would i would uh gladly entertain a

174recommendation to have on-site prom if the traditional outside catering venues were not able to accommodate our students so we can start planning basically as long as we follow those guidelines yes you may okay great and then my second thing was about the ap exams which you mentioned earlier um so i thought that they were in may but a teacher recently said something about it possibly being in june because the school gets to choose if we are in person so if we are in person which i think we are is the date going to stay the same in may or is it going to be in june and if we do go to school how is the whole thing going to be with social distancing and all that because it's going to be all of us

175coming to school at once and it's going to be i don't know how many kids per classroom but right guidelines for that so we have not met with the testing coordinators yet to look at what a protocol would look like to administer the ap exams it will most likely span a period of time a larger window of time so that we can ensure social distancing so i don't have an absolute answer to that yet just my tentative answer and the tentative answer is they will most likely be extended the window will likely be extended for when those exams will be administered um and it may be something between may most likely between the latter part of may and june okay got it that's it thank you all right you're welcome thank you trustee uh mcgowan

176you had a report uh yeah just three quick things uh first i just want to say thank you for everyone who participated in the trapagen book fair which ended last week it was very successful we have people from lots of schools not just trafficking come and participate uh raise thousands of dollars for the for the pta and and it'll benefit the teachers and staff there um it was more than it was 150 percent of what was earned at last year's so uh is great uh second thing is for those uh interested we will have as i think we mentioned last meeting we'll have the first uh subcommittee meeting for the expanding the cte program to uh the trades at the high school that'll be thursday at one o'clock uh via zoom anyone can log in

177if they want to listen into that and last thing is i just want to rem you know just take a minute and just dr gorman mentioned it during his part of the presentation but last week was the one year anniversary of the first closure due to covid and i think i and everyone i know and probably everyone in the city has lost someone due to this disease or knows somebody who's lost someone many of us have lost jobs and lost opportunities and lost lots of time um so we have a lot to mourn and i want to recognize that and not diminish it but i also want to recognize the incredible efforts that have been made at the very be from the very beginning of this from the staff we were always ahead of the

178curve we were never reacting we were always one step ahead of many other districts from ordering the technology and getting getting laptops into in the kids hands arranging for internet access all these other things that went into it um so just thanks everyone for that but if i had to you know pick one group above all to recognize it's our teachers i think that over the last year we have asked our teachers to do completely unprecedented things that no teachers have ever been asked to do and the the way that they have all stepped up is just nothing short of amazing and i know it's been a hard year and some students have lost ground um but i can't we can't ask any more than we've seen from our teachers over the last year so

179thank you very much to all of you for the the the lions work that you've put in to keep us going thank you trustee and i echo that our teachers have been extraordinary extraordinary okay are we ready to go on to the uh trustee turn quest jones i just want to uh say that i i was able to go to the track pagan um book fair on a saturday morning and uh spent a pretty a lot of money on a saturday morning during colby i was so happy um i thought it was really awesome um uh shout out to the pta there so now i'm a part of the pta at trapagan and then i was able to also go back to uh traphagan for their um their seuss day their dr seuss day and

180i was able to read a poem to them and and watch the children hang out and uh and be read to and celebrate reading across america so i just wanted to just get that report um i was able while i was there i was able to um to observe the the gym teacher and it was awesome watching him um with uh the the program on it's not a promethean board i think it was a smart board uh dr hamilton you need to get some promethean boards brother anyway it was a um you know the the the um the program was on a smart board and um and the students were socially distanced and it was pretty awesome to watch them uh interact with one another so yeah that's it great thank you we did anyone

181else have anything uh they'd like to report i don't have a report but i just wanted to also piggyback off of uh thanking not only the teachers but our maintenance people and our people in the the kitchen who uh have to get out there on the front line and help these children and i just wanted to say kudos to them as well great it's been an incredible team effort it's been fantastic okay anyone else well i do have a committee report well there you go this would be the appropriate time okay um i was i'm on the um the advisory um the advisory council with dr kim smith we have our meetings the first monday of the month so we had a meeting on march 1st and the uh the notes i have is that

182they reviewed concerns of the student service committee the case loads they they reviewed job descriptions they reviewed the new york i guess nyssca the school counselor evaluation that's due on april 12th and they also talked about um what's next year so the next meeting is going to be april 12th i guess that's after the break so that's all i have on that it was a short meeting just had to get that out there we have to have the meeting every month that's all i have great um one one comment i just want to make just to alert the board that um dr hamilton and i are are going to have a presentation by uh some developers who i i found out through uh city council canada forum that well actually i got i made a

183comment to people running for city council that i would become their worst nightmare if they were moving forward with residential development uh programs without revenue tax dollars associated with it and um i got a call the next day and i was it was nice someone said like i heard you and i want to come in and present a new project that's it was presented to the planning board you could see it on facebook if you want but anyway um they did offer to come in and present to us so um on thursday morning and um you know we're ready to hear what they have to say but we're also ready to educate and inform them about the structure of the schools now but i think a lot of people are under misconception about how our

184schools are structured and the the nature of neighborhood schools etc and the fact that we don't have middle schools anymore so anyway um but i just wanted to give everybody the heads up that we are having that meeting um thursday morning so this is the developers not the people running for city council correct no this is the developers themselves who you know they they they want to share with us what their plan is and you know i said we we just have to be at the table i basically said you know you the school district has to be at the table because the impact is too great and you know anyway we all know what the story is so so that's who's presenting yes and uh i think of the the the onus is on

185us to educate them as to what it costs us on an incremental basis and what the step variables are in terms of you know you could have a building with two students and that wouldn't have a huge impact but you have a school with a building i mean a building with 15 or 20 students in a neighborhood school that has a big impact so it's just a question of educating them as to how it works in the education world which i'm relying on the experts to explain to them but also the budgetary impact so anyway um that's it i will uh if if everyone's okay i will move on to the uh agenda for this evening for the resolutions um we can do a lightning round um anyway so uh first i would need a

186um a motion to approve human resources resolution 4.1 motion rusty saunders second trustee patterson any questions all in favor aye aye i okay opposed abstain jeff okay jeff is abstaining did i hear somebody else misunderstood yeah i thought i did too but okay i guess we didn't um all right may i have a motion to approve business office uh resolution 5.1 motion you have a second please second jesse patterson thank you any questions about any elements of this no but thank you for the donations yeah thank you it's good news right money comes in versus going out um all right so all those in favor aye aye aye aye aye aye [Music] opposed abstain abstain jeff's abstaining trusty reds abstaining okay motion carries may i have a motion to approve uh business office resolution 5.2

187motion declaration of emergency work motion oh let me second this one too i got it that's your job okay i can do it any questions about cleaning up the tanks well i just want to clarify that i mean my my understanding from talking to mr licho is that there there's no we have no known environmental issues that's not what this is about we're not it's not like there's an oil spill going on in the school it's a compliance it's just a clean it up contain it or remove it these are now uh mr pelica these are these are decommissioning active tanks or these these seal tanks that aren't being used anymore so um there's 10 tanks in nine buildings that have not been used for over a year the tanks range from ages of 1963

188to 2002. most of them are single wall steel construction they've outlived their useful life they're not used anymore because we're on straight gas and so the department of health has ordered us to either close them in place or remove them right that's that's required by law yes yes okay so uh all in favor of this uh resolution i i i sorry opposed available and share that share that share the fun all right any any questions about this resolution 6.1 i have a question okay uh cat the catapult learning can uh can someone just fill me in what is this for a relatively short amount of time this year catapult learning is used by lady of victory that's a program they use and because they're getting it from our title one money we have to come

189through us so that's their program that they use in media victory when you say it's the pro like what is it is it an after school program is it a universal yes got it okay okay any other questions all in favor aye aye aye aye opposed abstain did everybody vote yes okay motion carries uh may i have a motion to approve school improvement resolution 6.1 motion second second 6.2 i'm sorry 36.2 okay in motion any questions about uh mbk and power hour and people who are going to be working on those initiatives yeah i just had a question of what um didn't we already do this at the beginning of the year why are we just doing this now is this for the whole year for now what what you mean for the power hour

190well um like mbk for the 20 for the 2020 2021 school year yeah but not for for not for brother mohammed we did not do brother muhammad at the beginning of the year for his his his team yes he get a fact of the statement for doing the mbk and we did not put it in and the only way he can be paid is if we put it in and all the fellows and mentors also yes okay all right any other questions all in favor aye opposed i'm a late eye sorry i have a very slow mute button opposed abstain okay motion carries oops uh may i have a motion to approve student services resolution 7.1 motion any questions about the uh special ed recommendations okay albeit all in favor all right i opposed abstain

191motion carries you have a motion to approve building and grounds resolution 8.1 motion second trustee wanda any questions about three items the change orders there is a summary okay all in favor opposed opposed abstain okay motion carries may i have a motion to approve superintendent resolution nine point one motion second miss patterson we discussed this last uh two weeks ago uh in executives any questions though okay may i have a motion to approve board of ed resolution 11.1 motion second am i going any questions about this uh this is our regular election okay uh all in favor all right opposed abstain motion carries okay that is the end of our public business for this evening i have a motion to go into executive session for the purposes of mr mccormack we are entering executive session

192this evening to talk about the employment history of particular person or persons as well as receive advice from council and to discuss current litigation between the district and the city of mount vernon motion aye motion second what are we supposed to do yes all in favor aye okay thank you to the community uh for staring with us this evening we need to tell them how long are we are we going to come back we're not coming back okay that's good no offense to any of you who won't be joining us um we'll see you at the next board meeting thank you very much all you