001responsive practices, literature, curriculum, and assignments that represent our world, and accurately represent the service, better understand and acknowledge systemic limitations many by doing so it provides a more thorough understanding of what it means to be American and affirms the identities that each and every one of us. We must create a safe space for students who are all too often invisible in the lessons they are being taught. Therefore, I'm asking that our board and district continue to implement the district equity policy and regulation that were unanimously adopted last year. Additionally, this year on October 14th, our purpose kickoff event is taking place. District can participate by teaching lessons for the racial justice and by planning virtual field trips for our students on this day. I hope that you take this regression since as well as in
002regulation as well as our pathways equity inclusion and inclusion should be a continued focus within our school community. Thank you and again I want to reiterate how much I appreciate making this a career for our students. Just about anything in particular to report on for the property committee. John did mention that since our last meeting they have conducted the pre-bid walkthroughs with the contractors for phase one of the legacy project. For you that are not familiar with what we're getting essentially phase one the legacy project was uh they have the third floor air conditioning boilers, maple lab boilers and chiller district-wide IT earth closets. That's our last meeting and I'll continue to keep everyone informed about the progress of the legacy. Any questions? Rajb drink garland right any question No So right now it looks
003like forth it's been a long week. Sean Walters trying to keep things on track a few minutes back for the edition report. A couple other things. I just mentioned the last time that we met they did looks over some 7,000 plus policies which have been distributed on our agenda to go down today these are probably around facilities, Werentep Steps. Any other � beam 체거는 офucken our COVID-19 fall policies or anymore studying none? We are moving on to the best part of my course course reports or training groups. I want to LA Planas to A resume together with all individuals who join the SubCon meet in Los Angeles and where there's more expectation on updating our 999 Anemone simply for June 21 5103 Locomotive Why We Should You Be In The Music idiom addressed. This will
004be shown desires all students from around the world. They've also been using theirしま have been nice to sort of take part in outdoor activities and outdoor learning. I've also employed a new ELA, K through two reading routine, to allow young students to find book interests and be done with my Halloween slideshow for the upcoming holiday. Lake Yacht has been settling well into the new school year and they've had comfort in a regular routine, back to fully in the school. And everyone there is happy, healthy, and grateful to be back in person this year. Division Street has had a great time balancing COVID regulations as well as managing new district initiatives. And they're also great for in-person learning this year. And then Greenfield has had fire safety. They had the local fire department come in on
005Friday, October 8. And the students got to use hoses and tunnels to learn outdoor safety routine. And I think that's pretty much it. I have a few words of safety for everyone when I say that everyone in the district has been very helpful to back fully in time. Middle school. To kick off PDIS, we've had a really nice spirit day on Friday, October 8. No racist spirit. It's like the great weather outside. Students have been enjoying the nice and donated and my RA picnic tables there. Clubs after school activities and extra help has all been running. And finally, the Scholastic World Fair is this week. So now for the search. School update. The high school has virtual open house last week where teachers met with parents and he is going to share course information. Tomorrow,
006Wednesday, October 13, the high school is offering the PSAT exam for all 10th and 11th graders free of charge during the school day. During that day, freshmen and seniors, grades 9 and 12, will be asynchronous. Third time the high school has offered this to their seniors. Classes plan an event for Halloween today. We're going to have a class together for some fun on October 29. It looks like it will be a dance. And then October, the October newsletter has recently set up. So all families need more information about the other great things happening at that time. That concludes our student meeting. They will be expected to join us at Princess Tudor Street. Thank you. First off, I want to thank the entire staff here at Division Street for hosting the board presentation tonight. Prior to
007the start of the meeting, Dr. Miller was able to lead us on a tour. And I want to thank our students in the E&L program. Fifth grade, they did an awesome job showcasing the program and talking to the board about all of the activities that they do throughout the day and the close relationship they have working with their teachers. And then we had a chance to visit various classrooms in the building, showcasing the instructional space and how great of our staff has been through working through COVID era. And also, I had the opportunity to learn about the new American program, which is a new reading series that all of our kindergarten through second grade teachers across the district have implemented this fall. So a tremendous amount of time invested in professional development. Wonderful to hear
008the positive feedback from our teachers about how quickly the students are engaged in the reading program. And not only the work that's being done here in school, but the excitement of taking books home and reading with their parents in anticipation of what's to come the next day. So thanks to Dr. Miller for hosting and to all the teachers for the wonderful job that we continue to do working with our kids here at Commission Street. We're going to, behind us up, I want to provide a board and the community with just an update on all things health and safety. And then Lisa's going to follow up with some of our academic instructional plans. As all of you know, obviously, we're in a pandemic. Everybody has been doing just an incredible job. And so as one of
009our students, the excitement about the opportunity to be back in person again this year. We're one, officially one month completed into the school year. So we get a lot of credit. It goes out to our teachers, out to our building minister, and also to our families. They provided to the school district over this first month. It's been a wonderful success, but also continue to present great challenges for all of us. We are again ultimately getting our kids back in school in a safe and healthy learning environment. Last Wednesday was called Deds Day across New York State. And that's an opportunity to take a snapshot in time, not only from the student perspective, but about what our overall role is from a staff perspective. And just to give the community and the board perspective about how
010many individuals come into our school buildings every day. As of last Wednesday, we have 5,989 students and close to 1,100 employees. To put that together, just think about the challenges that we've been able to overcome as a school. Welcoming points back in our eight of our school buildings and then the incredible job that our bus drivers are getting our students to and from school safe. Room service staff, preparing free breakfast and free lunch every day for our students. And then our facilities operations that anytime the board has a chance to visit our schools, it's just so impressive how clean and well kept our facilities are. So like I mentioned, not only have we had great success, all the academic and the social will reconnect and reengage our students. We know COVID is still relevant. Our
011community presents challenges to us on a daily basis. So the board has asked for me to keep them up to date as to the number of cases. We've been working through in partnership with our school nurses, our building minister, our classroom teacher, having this all into health and safety from the place to ensure again and protect. We've had 61 total cases, student and staff cases, since we reopened school in September. And one of the things that we also are kind of keeping track of is all those positive cases, each one of those cases is handled and when the principals are working with school nurses and classroom teachers on the contact by accounting, we know each one of those cases can obviously have a ripple effect on other students that may be quarantined by accounting. So
012it's good to always continually educate the community about the role of the school district in providing the health and safety aspects, but also our partnership with the county school district. Again, we maintain our academic records, our CD charts, the attendance for every day. That information, we look at our contact tracing records, then share it with the county, a school specialist for the county. And the counties that winded up, obviously they determined the quarantine and how many, whether it be students or staff members, may be impacted. If you remember just a few weeks ago, we were also 150 students in quarantine by system. What I'm very happy to share is as of today, we're less than 10 students. Today, less than 10 students as a result of contact tracing. So again, the end of the year
013did present challenges. Obviously having all the kids coming back and having the activity level of our students getting back together in school buses. And so again, we had a few challenges right off the bat. But over the last two weeks, we definitely have seen some significant in progress with just the reduction in the number of cases. I mentioned last time, we've almost seen a clip. Our last year, we had about 100,000 cases in our high school level. And now we're starting to see the majority of our cases that are coming in at the K-5 level. That's attracting back the eligibility of who can be vaccinated. Our high school students, those that we've got here in school. And again, when it comes to contact tracing, those individuals who chose to be vaccinated do not, or have
014impacted the rate that the unvaccinated students are in those cases. So we're looking forward to the opportunity to open up the next gate to a new group of students to be vaccinated that will host those points again. And ultimately, that's a parent choice, whether to be vaccinated or not. But still, the layers of health and safety protocols that we have in place are proven to be effective in school. We continue to not see spread occur in school. You know, you have clusters sometimes of a few groups of kids, whether they're in the same class, they're on the same bus. Sometimes it traces back to activities that are happening outside of school. Kids are having to be playing on the same soccer team, or there's the party house that you start to see there's connections to
015cases. But people have been working tremendously hard, again, in creating a learning environment that's as safe as possible for our students. So, you know, there's a safe website that reports all the school districts across the area. I looked it up today. It's just our neighboring schools. We're much larger, obviously, than a lot of our neighboring schools. So, total number of cases is almost, you know, equivalent to most of the surrounding school districts. So, again, a lot of credit to our teachers, you know, working with our students, the patients of our family members. I know it can be frustrating to receive a phone call from a school nurse that your child, you know, was contact tracing, whether it be on a bus or in the cafeteria. But we're trying to put as many mitigation strategies in
016place. Another update for the board. Last meeting I talked about the number of our staff members reported to self-report. We asked our staff to provide proof of documentation, either the Excelsior Pass or their CDC vaccination card. Back in September, the New York City Department of Health required all school district employees to either be vaccinated or to test on a weekly basis. So, we are partnering with Cerro County Department of Health. Approximately 84% of our staff, their vaccination status. So, we've got about 170,000 staff members, again, out of 11,000 people. Next week, we'll begin our testing program. So, we had a meeting this morning with Dr. Pruels. This morning, we just had a look-alike. We'll be utilizing the project. A bunch of our man, maybe, we can run it. That will continue to partner with the
017county to provide some diagnostic tests. It was advised that we could provide students with a test because we're hearing a lot of feedback from parents that the nutrition's office is right now overwhelmed. You have kids who just have your typical seasonal allergies and illness. But parents are playing things safe and are bringing their kids to the Peterson offices. We recommend the turnaround time. I think the doctors have a number of tests that they're doing to provide some relief. We welcome pediatricians. So, we hope to have that program again using the same test, the different tests, making that available. So, school districts in Cerro County continue to really partner with our county health department. They have an incredible resource. We continue to advocate for the health of our students. We have our students that we have
018regularly with our parents to help answer their questions that are real out there. The number of days that kids are out there. And some of the disruption, obviously, that causes students, but their families, during those quarantine. So, obviously, there's a ripple effect. Besides, we also work, we monitor. I don't have to speak up. Visuals, if we don't get that going, then I'll just send that out back. A couple of pieces to give context. I believe the whole program is going to be a presentation from last time. But, just our quarantine academic . So, while this talks about academics, and the last time we were here was about two weeks ago, which is two weeks into the school year, you can't separate the academic from the relationships with classmates. And so, even though I'm not giving
019you slides upon slides about those kinds of connections, they're really important. And our teams have done a fantastic job, based on what they've learned over the past 18 months, knowing to make those connections. Because even though we have on-site schooling five days a week this year for everyone, as the first two weeks show, there's new unknowns. There's ups and downs we're going to be going through all year again. So, be nimble and be patient. Be nimble again and be thoughtful and reflective. And not be afraid to adjust. Pieces of our approach here and will continue to. So, all of these things support our core beliefs that we have opportunity, collaboration, community, and personalization. This slide, I just wanted to pick up and give context that was a lot of work from last year in preparing
020for the academic. And the social-emotional piece. And the furthest to the right, talk about getting back to school and the guidance, that sort of thing. The splash you've read up there, the update, here's what's happened since then. I talked a little bit about us setting up a tutoring program for our students when they were quarantined. When we got the official notice from the Department of Health. So, we began with a program with a pilot. And thanks to two of our retired Saratoga teachers, Janine McGuigan and Teresa Atoll, we began a pilot at sixth grade because we found that when we start small, we can work out some of the bumps more quickly as we go to scale it up. So, we ran that for two weeks and we made adjustments in terms of groupings, in
021terms of communication, in terms of communication with parents. And then we used that information to enter into our iTutor, tutor and quarantine tutoring, which that's for all those tutors, for kids who've been out of school. We started with four or more days. So, when they get back, a longer quarantine. Now, just hold on to the four-day thing because we've been able to back it up a little bit and move more quickly. But we started that last week, K-5. And then we were able to also add six through 12. And so, I should be getting some more data back from that. And again, already, just having that out today, it's day four. We've gone through some bumps and bruises, but we'll continue to adjust to that. So, moving along, just to talk in general about quarantines.
022The district doesn't quarantine. We get that information from the Department of Health. There are other things. There are a variety of activities that students will be engaged in while they are on quarantine. The first couple of days are more accessing information on CSOF K-5 or campus in 6-12. And then that long-term quarantine tutoring will click in. And again, on the social-emotional connection piece, our teachers have been reaching out and will continue to do so throughout the time when students are out. They're so much more creative than I am in the way that they do that. Some of them have set up these amazing Zoom chats after school. Some of them have made videos, phone calls, you name it. I can't do it justice. And we are required to take for quarantines that are longer than
023three days. When we find that out, that's when you're able to run a report and pull names and then enroll them in the program. And then working with a company you contracted with. They are providing live instructional support online to small groups. They are, you've heard Dave talk about Ed Law 2D in many of his presentations. That means this is a vetted company. It is safe to use. And it uses only certified teachers. You may be asking, why not? I know that you did a pilot with your retired teachers. Do you have any concerns with that? That's a great question. But again, the other thing is there's, this is a great sentence, but the problem is the organization and the work force to be able to handle it and to be prepared and can provide
024a consistent and stable schedule isn't there to be able to do that well with it. So, that's why we did that. And how that works is the district has provided this company and worked with that over the past couple of weeks sharing those curriculum pacing guides, what things the teachers are working on and when that is needed. So they're familiar with that and they're able to provide that curriculum that they need to follow. in classrooms with them. So they're not providing exact getting in their individual classrooms that would be impossible, but they're reinforcing at the K-6 level, following the pacing guide, and focusing on those skills, on a set schedule. So this is just a break out in general of the shorter quarantine on the left for elementary, the three or more days, and then
025if we don't hold class, we'll leave that to you. The part that is the update is this card. So this is what quarantine learning with iTutor looks like. So on the left-hand side is the schedule, one hour per day, Monday through Friday. It follows similarly to home tutoring requirements. So we have great bands, okay, one, two, three, four, five. There's their hour, and then it's a combination of math and ELA. Tutor takes attendance and then shares that back with the district, and we share it back with the buildings. And as I mentioned, the tutors focus on skill reinforcement. And again, it's not just that. They're not going to be working unless there's only one student that's in the great band that day. Then they'll probably work on the actual assignment, but this is skill reinforcement.
026Which is what the research has shown during this time of pandemic learning is one of the most beneficial forms of additional instruction. You'll see that iTutor starts on day three for students. We didn't know how long it was going to take. Originally we thought it might take four days to get set up. Then three days. If we can get kids in as soon as we get that information. Some kids have been, they get notified, and we're able to get them in the next day. We need to get the information from the buildings by 10 o'clock in the morning to get them set up for the next day. So we've been working on that to make a much faster turnaround. So that will be as soon as possible. But at the latest three days in. Parents
027receive an email with information on how to log into iTutor. They also receive a phone call. They will also receive a nice little flyer when they have to pick their child up from school. Which just has additional information to help. Because this is again, something new, different time. The more information we can share, the better. So that's K-5. One of the things that's not out here yet is the support for students with disabilities. That we're going to add that schedule in. That will be resourced from on a daily basis. Secondary, again those first few days, accessing information on campus. And then reaching out to teachers. Teachers reaching out to them. Ongoing communication. Sixth grade, we separated out from the rest of seventh through 12 because we found, we piloted the sixth grade because that's a
028huge transition year for kids. And in working with them, the middle school administration and the initial surge at the beginning of the year, it just became very clear that we needed to support those students and that they're going out. So again, the hours follow the outline for home instruction in terms of two hours per day, Monday through Friday. And again, there are your basic classes on Friday. This will, you have to update it to include more math. Because based on the data from last year, we don't want to just leave Friday open when we can provide some instruction in math because that's an area that the data showed our students could use. Otherwise it's a similar procedure. In that sixth grade also gets the skill-based instruction based on the common pacing. For middle and high
029school, you'll see that students also have after school, hours two days a week and flex period within the day to get additional assistance with their teachers. Seven through 12 are very similar. There's a schedule there. On Fridays you have your language from in there because seven through 12 students are in Spanish and Latin. The difference here with seven through 12 is because there are so many different courses, and so many different classes offered, particularly in the high school, it is more, you bring your work to online and it can help you. Now, you may be thinking, wow, seven through 12 is a really big range. As you heard Dr. Patton say, there are 10 students currently. So both of our students are at the elementary level. So even though we have seven through 12 together
030in the high school, and potentially within those time frames, they can be working individually and still get the attention based on what we've seen so far. We may need to adjust that, and you'll hear me say that time and time again. And so we will be looking at the data as far as who is attending, how our attendance is going, and the feedback that we are getting. So we monitor and adjust, and those are some frequently asked questions. I think one of the questions that came up last time, I added on the bottom, why can't you just record the class? You can record the class. That is also an option. As I mentioned at the start, there's many different ways that students will be receiving information from their teachers, recording it via audio, recording part
031of the class itself, and then posting it so students can rewatch it at their convenience in addition to tutoring time. Those are all potential things that teachers can do depending on what they are teaching. So not a one size fits all. We're working through pieces of it still that the students with disabilities especially, and we'll continue to work through it. That's about where we're at right now. So if a student feels that they would benefit from having an audio or visual recording, would they, ask the teacher, what would be that process to say, I'm sorry to interrupt, but since it's not specific to the lesson plan, how would they rely on asking for that? I would say they could speak directly to the teacher. There are a lot of different things that can be used.
032It could be part of the lesson. It could be a pre-made video from somewhere else that could be posted. That's part of it. Could I have the name of the person speaking, please? Hi, I'm Lisa Cutting. I'm the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction assessment. Thank you. You're welcome. I think you said 10 a.m. So is that just for the secondary? No, it's for page 12. We have to input it, then the company processes it, sends it to the tutor. They need to look at who's coming in, what pacing guides they need to look at in preparation. So if they're supposed to get like eight to nine, they wouldn't make it that day. That's what they want. So they're supposed to be up all day. Again, if they're one of this hour, the hour is eight
033to nine for the . We generally say we can get it in by 10, but again, there's 90 kids all of a sudden. If we're up again, then it might not be the next day. It might take longer. So that's why we try to build in there. But we have been able to turn it around. And one of the things I mentioned earlier, again, working with the county, on some advocacy efforts, the 10-day quarantine period, obviously it's a long time for kids to be out when they've been contact tracing and quarantining. So the county is exploring opportunities to do some opting out and some testing protocols that can potentially reduce from 10 days to a few days. So we can minimize that period of time and then turn around the tutoring time, again, to 10
034days. So we can minimize that period of time and then turn around the tutoring time, again, to 10 days. So we can minimize that period of time and then turn around the tutoring time, again, to 10 days. So we can minimize that period of time and then turn around the tutoring time, again, to 10 days. And really trying to minimize any kind of disruption for the time that gets in the care of schools. So again, we're talking about asymptomatic students, the students that were identified as close contacts, you know, again, that are feeling well, that just happen to be home because they're quarantined by the county. Obviously not students that have tested positive that would be required to be out for the full 10-day period as any other member of the community who tests positive,
035because they're not COVID. So it's all those other situations that, you know, when we go through contact tracing protocols, really trying to limit and be, you know, much more accurate as to, you know, who those potential close contacts are, again, to reduce the number of students that may have been home unnecessarily, but again, erring on the side of being safe and working with the county. So again, we're hoping that just the next few days to pass some information that we can share out to the parents that would obviously impact on reducing the amount of time that gets invested. The last thing I'll leave you with is that we are in on to keep up with the changing guidance conditions, 50 other people that we're in contact with, and they're going through the same kinds of
036struggles and trying to figure out what works best and what works best at one point. And at one point in time, it may not work best at another point in time. So trying to learn from each other and bottom line, do right by our two-quarter data. Okay, at this time, I'd like to turn it over to Scott Singer. He's here with our middle school industry. So we just have the one presentation tonight by our middle school folks, annual program report. So just maybe a few minutes here for a few more presentations, and then we'll turn over to Scott. Scott, you want to go first? Scott, you want to go first? Yeah, I'll go first. So on behalf of Maple Avenue staff, students, parents, guardians, we want to thank all of you, Dr. Pat and the
037board of trustees for having us here tonight. On our annual report for Maple Avenue, I'm going to give you a chance to speak a little bit, our administrative team. But I would like to say, yes, it's been a wild ride since March of 2020. Back in March 2020, we took a little hiatus, and then all last year, we had our hybrid instruction. We averaged about, on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Thursdays and Fridays, we had that break, and then instructional day on Wednesdays, we had 425 students average on those four days per day. So now we have 1,402 students better. That is, yes, it has been tough, but we hope we don't challenge at times that happen to me. For all of us, you know, we've got Tim McGregor out there, there he is. The teachers
038have done an amazing job. They really have. You're going from half the population to full 30 students. 25 to 30 students in class. So yes, we have been wearing these masks. So, but tonight, I do want to give a round of applause to our admin team, everybody in that building, what they have done. An amazing, amazing job. It has to be a complete team effort. But tonight, we're going to be talking about our building goals for 21-22, and how they correspond to the after-schools. You can hear me? Rob, no. Okay. So, I live at one of the SSFU homes, and I'm excited to talk to you about how we're doing. We're going to be talking about our district goal, and what that means for our students. So, our district goal is increasing the value of
039equity of opportunity. So, one of our district goals is increasing the number of students that are performing at or above grade level and noticing . And at Maple, we really have been eye-listing the leaders in the iReady along with Dorothy Nolan, kind of taking that iReady and seeing what we can do with it. So, it has been our guide to having our patients have student growth in both reading and math. Maple, our students typically participate in iReady testing. So, we're able to get a snapshot of our building, right? And not only are we able to get a snapshot of our building from that district level, we're able to drill in and see what's happening on the classroom level, and then drill in again and see where our students are. And not just where they are
040with grade level permission, but what skills have they mastered in reading and math, and what skills are they ready to learn, and also where are their skills at the current level. So, we're able to get a snapshot of our building, and we're able to see what's happening and what their skills are. Teachers are able to have that information about all of those areas, and they also have access. There are lessons that can be resources for teachers, and there's also some really great activities that are created. And I think one of the strengths of the iReady program is they take those activities and they say, all right, you have to work on skill X. Here's an activity that you can use for students that are at grade level. You can use, keep this activity locked down
041for students that are below grade level, and how am I going to take my kids who are above grade level and bring them to the next level. So, all of those resources are ready for our teachers to use. It helps our teachers with their instructional practices in terms of grouping their students. All right, so based on the iReady testing, you have all of these students in your class that really need help with solving one-step equations. And the teacher can then say, okay, now, Alexa, John, Peter, and Ann, I'm going to work with you guys over here. Sarah, Tina, and Alex, you guys are going to work in this group over here, and you're going to do some enrichment work, because I can actually know where each of my kids are. In addition to kind of
042supporting our teachers with instruction, it also helps. So, every single student is created an individual learning. They can access this at any time after they take it. And it is tailored to that. Where are they in their skill path, and where do they need to go? So, every kid has a path. Are I ready? Yes. So, support staff has shared with us that students who participate and actually work with that program at least 45 minutes each time reading are the ones that have the most significant gains over the year. So, at Maple, this year we're really trying to push our students to actually access those lessons. Our teachers are supporting us in this and using our flex time and study hall time to get our students engaged in those lessons. So, again, we're maximizing their
043growth on top of what our teachers can . Here is our IEP growth from last year. Just taking a look at fall, and there are students scored. And if you're focusing in on the green there, you can see that in the fall we had 60% of our students performing at or below grade level. And in the spring, we were able to increase 2% of students that were below grade level, on grade level, or below. So, if you're just thinking about the population of people, that's basically taking one full classroom and bringing all of those students where they need to be, which I feel like is a really great accomplishment. If you take a look at our math growth, you can see here in the fall we had 47% of our students at or above grade
044level, and we were able to raise that 11% of students we increased to at grade level or above. And when we're talking about students, that's about five whole classrooms of students that we were able to bring to on grade level or above. And again, great accomplishment. I just want to point out here too, if you're wondering why there's such a discrepancy, we were talking about 60% of kids when we were talking about reading, and now we're dropping to about 47%, 50%. And we need to take a look at our math. My money growth, our algebra students, our students in grade that take algebra, do not participate in that. So, if we kind of throw them back in, and we're trying to do them there also on grade level, we have some equalized pieces there. We're
045talking about in sixth grade, we had 66% of students that were at or above grade level at the end of the year. At seventh grade, we had about 60% of students at or above, and we talk about eighth graders adding those algebra kids, and we're about 57%. Alright, so there really isn't that much of a dip, but we're touching on it, not testing all of our stuff. We take a look at another piece where we're trying to address that pretty well opportunity, is we're trying to increase our math. We're trying to improve academic performance, but we're also trying to implement culturally responsive. And we are working with Anna Munoz. She is fabulous. She's guided all of our staff meetings. We've taken a look at bias as a group. We've looked at microaggressions. And this year,
046she's going to be working directly with all of our staff to navigate difficult conversations in the classroom. In addition, our department heads at Avenue and at the team, we are looking at a book. It's called Grading for Equity. What it is, why it matters, and how it can transform development. And we're all taking a look at this, reading this together, breaking it down chapter by chapter, and really coming up with how we can take Maypole and possibly change something as big as grading to make sure our students are treated fairly and actively. I'm now going to step away and introduce Amy Coutinho. And she's going to talk a little bit about the collaboration and what we've been working towards. First of all, professional learning teams and academic teams are a big part of our collaboration.
047I want to make a little bit of a distinction here. Professional learning teams, or PLTs, are subjects. They talk about common assessments. They will get data as a team. They discuss instruction and pedagogy. And each teacher has their own set of students. While academic teams are course-effect teachers, the special ed teacher and the counselor, who are working with the same team are the same group of students. Those academic teams are critical to working with middle-level students. We're currently having some academic team training with Berkemeyer Consulting. Jack Berkemeyer lives and breathes the middle-level teaming. He is going to work with our teams in January, visit with us, and explore what our teams do. And we'll celebrate their strengths and recommend ways to improve so we can make our teaming even more effective. A few years ago,
048I was fortunate to attend one of his workshops, and he was both inspiring and informative. And we're very lucky to have him as an expert. So ELA completed theirs last year. Math, art, music, physical education, slash health are all either starting or about to start. These departments are working together to ensure a guaranteed and viable curriculum for each of their subject areas. So that is what got us to where we are. We will not have the level points that we do this next year. But in this very important year, it is very important that we continue to improve and integrate technologies for our one-to-one devices as a tool in our classroom. We are fortunate to have a TILT committee, which is the main technology school down in New York. It consists of teachers in multiple
049grade levels and multiple subject areas. They meet and explore best practices in technology, looking at all of the tools that are available to them. We have them building as well, and help them to figure out how to use some of these new tools. We are beginning to implement digital learning standards in computer science and digital fluency standards. These are relevant to both computer science classes and other subject areas. It is not just the computer. For example, ELA does a research project. You have to have computer literacy skills to be able to do such things. And digital learning standards are things like cybersecurity, collaboration using technology, and of course, so many problems. So, we have to be able to use these tools to get this done. And that's what I'd like to introduce, Mr. Tim Harris.
050Quick story. I did some housework. I'll be doing a kitchen. This morning, I felt like I was about to... So then, at about 11 o'clock today at lunch, one of my students comes up to me and says, Do you know so-and-so? She's my mom. Twice, twice within about eight hours. What we're doing to involve the community in the inmate lab. We had, at the beginning of the school year, we had what was called Discover Maple. We brought in as many sixth graders as we could, and new seventh and eighth graders. And we had like a carnival atmosphere at Maple Lab. We had games, a truck, a tour of the building. We had a scavenger hunt. Just to ease the anxiety of kids coming back to school. We had some kids that obviously hadn't been back
051in the building in the evening. It went tremendous. And I'd like to thank Emily Ellis, Allison Hubs, and Melissa Connors for putting that together. At the end of August, we had our first parent vlog. We had a new schedule this year. Instead of the traditional 40 minute, nine period schedule, we now are in class for 70 minutes. It's amazing to see our hallways now. If you were in Maple Lab in the previous to this year, and you were in there and the class was dismissed, there were 1,400 to 1,500 kids in the hallway. Crazy. It really was. Swimming up river against the top. Now, we have staggered times for new classes, and it really helps their anxiety, obviously. As you know, the size difference between sixth period and eighth period can be tremendous. And sixth
052period feels so much more comfortable. We also went over our new COVID protocols, or our existing COVID protocols. We had an open house on September 30th. Zoom open house where we talked with the parents. We were invited. And also, something that was very important to us, we talked about what we can do at lunch. It's almost guaranteed you ask the students what they're most anxious about. Coming into the middle school, or even going to high school, and they'll say, the cafeteria. It's a thing in their head that the cafeteria is this bad. There are stories about it. So we gave students a choice of where they would like to eat at Maple Lab. We had three cafeterias, or you could choose to eat in a classroom. One smaller atmosphere, very few kids. We didn't have
053some kids. Take us up on that. So now we have three classrooms where kids can eat, and then we have three different spots in the building. And I'm assuming it's nice out in Maple Lab. Social media presence. We've tried to enhance that with Twitter and Facebook. Mrs. Manuel does that. I am not on Facebook. I don't want to be on Facebook. I hate social media. I do. I am. We do that. Canvas. Lisa Cuddy said earlier, it's been very important to us, especially with students that are missing, to have all our teachers post their schedules, homework assignments, any kind of assignments where kids can go and find out their assignments. Our Couching Department has put out a monthly newsletter, or is putting out a monthly newsletter, headed by Mr. Lummer. Our department has Ms. Tackins,
054Ms. Plant, Ms. Tucker, and Ms. Conners. They put out an monthly newsletter. This has been awesome. Mr. Singer had their first day, I think it was last week. Apparently, they picked things up. We have a totally new group with Parent Network, so we're looking forward to working with them. And last but not least is our Health Office. Without Ms. Vaughn and Ms. Poz, the first probably three weeks of school, we were in there constantly in their office. We contact Tracy. We were there every day. It seemed like that's all we were doing. Those poor ladies. I'm telling you, they come to work every day, and they do a tremendous job. Those two ladies, they deserve a lot of credit. And then the last one, the kind of neat thing, we had our part custodian reached
055out to the Greenfield, the Town of Greenfield Fire Department. They had a loss problem, floor pavement, they had to get on the tables. The Town of Greenfield Fire Department came up with their trucks. And when the coolest said, of course they showed up at about 2-10. We had a truck coming in, pulling, you know, we pulled the butter trucks to the side, cleared away at about 3 o'clock in the middle of the morning. Going into this year, we know that it ramped up our academic, behavioral, social, and emotional needs support for our students. We know that the transition for some of our students was going to be difficult, especially, you know, let's say our virtual students. Some of our virtual students have not been building since March of 2020, taking the full year off. And
056that, the Discover Maple was unbelievable. We talked about it for a number of years, and just having that, you see the weight off of our students' shoulders. As they, well first going in, it was tons of weight, but as they exited, it was just, it was just a great community event. We were on local news. It was a kickoff. That's something we hope we can build out for years to come. And it was just, we can definitely, you know, it's year one, but just getting the kids into the building, seeing the families that were out there too and enjoying it. You know, big shots to every push too, because of the menu, you've seen the menu for the schools. It's amazing. We're averaging about, about four times the kids, they're pumping through 600 meals a
057day, which is fantastic. I mean, kids are loving it. A lot of syrup around the building, but it's okay. We'll work on that. All right? But we, as we have to go through this year, we know that there's, there's, the academic behavior, social emotional needs, is really, really important. And so I was really excited when I saw, saw the acronym, you know, we're all about acronyms in education. So when I saw MTSS, and we were going in this direction, I've been to a lot of workshops in my time, especially working with the New York City Middle School Association, about MTSS. Just having everything under one umbrella, having PBIS, having those intervention academic supports for our kids is really, really crucial. So I know it's year one, and so we're taking a slow approach. Kelly Brock
058is one of our consultants. I would love to dive inside Kelly Brock's brain, because it is, she is wicked bright. And every time I meet with her, we always learn something new. So one of my administrative liaison, I'm not the COC or co-chair, but I'm a liaison, I'm the head of the instructional support team, that has made up of two school psychologists, an ELA teacher, a math teacher, and myself. And we meet once a month, we look at school data, we're taking the I-Ready data, which is crucial for us, because we know, with a school our size, with 1,400 kids, that sometimes our elementary schools are really busy. We have Dr. Renaldo Miller, my kids went through an element of Division Street here, and this is probably like maybe my last presentation ever now. At
059Division Street, my kids came through sixth and seventh grade, they're in now. But our elementary schools have done an amazing job of preparing our kids. But sometimes kids do fall through the cracks, and that's where we take the instructional support team and look at that data of I-Ready. If they're, let's say, one or two grade levels below, we can hop on it right away and make sure we're providing them with the right moves. Let's say a kid is maybe two or three grade levels below, and we need to dive deeper in, and that's where we're working with Kelly Brock. Because one of the things that we need as a team, we're always coming up with ideas of how to track through RTI, how to track through RTI, how to track various academic behavioral interventions. And
060so our goal for this year one is to work with Kelly and to create that database for our instructional support team and share with the teachers. Our PBIS community is a remap. We have Eileen, Alice, and Allison Hubs. They're the co-coordinators. They're doing an amazing job. We had a little PBIS kickoff last Friday, and so we had students outside the picnic tables, and it was great just for asking some various trivia questions because we know kids who are not together for a long time and they're very excited, especially our sixth graders. They're ramped up. And so we need to bring them back in just a little bit. We're working with our PBIS committees. We're going to be sharing out Blue Street Bucks again. We're going to have our Sarah Kibber swag shop. We're going to
061have a major emphasis on Second Step, which is our social emotional program. Yes, we're going to continue to work with our Time and Space Committee. This is our transitional schedule that we're pulling in. We know that some things we have to work through, but the big thing is that we need to get feedback from our whole entire Maple Avenue community faculty and staff. And so we're going to continue to work with Maple Avenue community faculty, staff, parents and students to see how that's the biggest thing is making sure it's collaborative, right? Yes, we're moving from a 40 minute schedule to a 70 minute schedule. But we just know that the goal is to provide PD along the way to our teachers. But we just want to see how it's going as the year goes on,
062as it progresses. And we're going to get that up and running in the next month or two with the Time and Space Committee. Some of those members that we've had many, many iterations of the Time and Space Committee over the years. But it's really nice that we still have that same core group that want to come back and keep working and continue to have those conversations. Yes, the Legacy Project, I'm hearing that Maple Avenue potentially is going to be earmarked for 2027. We've got to start planning now. We have multiple classrooms that are, that has flexible seating in the building. Compliments to Dave Wahamudu for having that grant, right? That's a great opportunity for teachers to put their name in the hat. We actually had several winners of that grant for the flexible seating. We've
063had Eileen Ellis. We've had a couple of other students that have been involved in the flexible seating. We've had a couple of other students that have been involved in the flexible seating. We've had Anna Whedon. But we can learn from those individuals because right when you choose furniture, you're stuck with that furniture for a very long time, right? We have very, very old sleigh desks. The desks are attached. But we know that through our flexible seating we have a large room for them as well. And kudos to John Teener and also Stacey out there. We've had great success with our four resource centers. We asked our special ed teacher if, let's say, if they had to push out, we can pull out a street, So when you come by and you do the building tour,
064you're going to see some of our new resource center classroom with the flexible seating. So now they have one location where they have a provider in the middle, but now we can combine those resources together so it's kind of a team approach. So we set up grade six, grade seven, we set up grade seven, grade eight resource centers that have all that brand new furniture. So there's thousands upon thousands of variations of furniture, but in 2027 we're looking at revamping the entire Columbia and Springs wing with that furniture. So based on the legacy plan, we have some exciting times ahead. All right, so you'll see this is what's amazing about Maple Avenue, you have amazing teachers, and yes, they are excited, yes, we had that resource of the one-none devices, but now when you walk
065around the hallway as you go into classrooms, you can see that collaborative learning setting taking place. We're excited to be back. And so are the teachers that have been back. Here's some pictures from Discover Maple, right? We're inviting two more students to our, you know, and you'll see what Mr. Demick on the left there, kind of a little cornhole, at the Discover Maple event. We've learned a great deal from the pandemic in the last year. We used a lot of our outside facility, and you're starting to see, you know, students going outside and having classes, right, doing some very, very creative things for some project-based learning. This is, yes, this is some photos from last year. We've looked at some amazing Zoom videos that we have, that they've shared with me, some interesting stories, things
066that took place on Zoom. We were never really officially supposed to be tapping into people's households, but guess what? We got through. And yes, what's great about Maple Avenue, we have some, you know, amazing student council. They're looking at a future school mascot. Yes, we're going to make sure it's, you know, it's going to be named Blue Street. We'll probably have some type of, you know, horse theme. But just something I've noticed at the other elementary schools, they have all their own mascots. But the goal is for Maple Avenue to bring some of this school spirit back. Right? High School Musical was, I mean, I'm sorry, the Maple Avenue musical was a huge success last year. Actually, we were able to hold, I'm sorry, it wasn't at Maple Avenue, but this year it's going to
067be Shrek. The Practice-a-thon, we, a lot of money, community center, organized by the music department, and it was called the Practice-a-thon. And so, as students at home, practice a great deal with your instruments, and they would actually get pledges for each of the students. Various celebrations. This was one of the huge takeaways that you learn a lot from last year. It might look like a pigment table, but last year we had a great eight moving up ceremonies. And so we decided to move them outside, and I think it happened in many other schools around the district. And you know what? It was just a huge success that it's never going back inside again. So it was great. The families loved it. And you say, hey, you know what? We're a parent-guardian. Bring a chair, bring
068a blanket, and it was all outside with DJs. And it was just such a nice setting to be on our football field to really send off our eighth graders. And that moment was the first time the entire eighth grade was together for each of the absences we think of, because they were separated. So it was really, the kids were, yes, we got very emotional. One thing we did at the beginning that was the eighth anniversary, and this is near and dear to my heart, because those kids would be firing. But we had a big party. We had, and I'll show the video out to you guys, the board trustees. We had Leah Hulsqua. She did a TAPS rendition for the whole school. And I'm going to silence you, like, play TAPS. We'll leave it up
069to the board for any questions. We've done a lot of good work. We've had teachers and administrators and our support staff. You know, again, we hear about the great academic results that our kids are having with the intervention and supports that are in place. But I think most of the kids are doing great. I think most importantly, and those were the staff's dedication to re-engaging and connecting our kids from that social-emotional level. And I had a chance to go over and be in the school year and see all the kids. I was excited to be where those were being the last few days. And I know the feedback from students and parents was, hey, we've got to do this every year because it's a great thing for what I'm going to do to start the
070school year, to walk our six-figures into the building. But especially this year. So we had to engage our sub-majors who had been in the building. So great job to our high school team. Thanks for all your efforts. Thank you so much. Referring to our agenda, do we have any modifications? There are no modifications to the meeting. So I would like to move that the approved agenda. Can I get a second? All right. Any discussion? All in favor? That's unanimous. All right. So that concludes our first meeting and opens our second period. Is there anyone who would like to address the board? Lucas, what you got? OK. Thanks. That will close our second period. And open the agenda plan. As you can see on the agenda plan, we have one item listed. That is our word
071meditation workshop that's going to happen on Tuesday, October 26, in in the project-based learning community and the different things where I work. So it's happening currently. To go over the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative and talk about that. Sure. The start of our district committee reopens next week. We've got our first district committee meeting. And Lisa and myself and Hillary and Michelle Whitley were asked by Jim Dexter in our BOCES to help facilitate conversation with the other 31 school districts in our BOCES region who were also working on DEI efforts. And so our team, about two weeks ago, presented to the 31 other school districts in our area and kind of upon reflection of that conversation and the superintendents of the New York State Conference who was held here in Cerro, two weeks ago. So
072we had a chance to really hear from the commissioner, Rosa, about DEI efforts across the state and best practices of other school districts. One of the takeaways that I learned is having the opportunity with our board leadership team is to reflect back on the work the board did last year in establishing our policy and regulations. And so I have the same opportunity for competition around professional development and support and really focusing the work that we've started over the last several years and answer the questions that the board may have and then set some goals for the upcoming school year. So our board workshops are open to the public. Those are public meetings. But really it's an opportunity for the nine board members to interact with any of the others who are in our consult with
073Generation Ready. And also to get the board to think about what they're doing. And get some feedback from some of the committee members who've been involved in the DEI work for the last year or so. It's great that obviously all the surrounding school districts are now beginning to have these important conversations to kind of learn from each other and talk about the best practices and then use the New York State Regents framework and cultural responses, teaching and learning as again, as a basis of the work that we have moving forward. So Tuesday the 26th, we picked up the board. We picked up the board at night. We figured most of us would have been down in New York City when the New York State School Boards Convention was canceled for in person. They are going
074to host some of the workshops virtually on Monday the 25th. So I know some of the board members will be participating in the workshops. So we're shooting for Tuesday the 26th for the DEI workshop with the Board of Education. As you said, in the high school BVLC. So we're shooting some for an assessing workshop. We will finalize those two documents that we did not finalize at our first school workshop. The meeting guidelines and the board ground rules. Those are two documents that we left in draft forms so that we can all make those subtractions as we want for ourselves to our documents. So I will take a blessing vote. Any suggestions on those two documents that night so we can finalize them and have them as our operating documents? So that should include two of
075it. So if more information on that at 5730. Yep. Mike, can you give us the expectation on the safety presentation? Board members are attending tomorrow? He just stepped out. He did? I guess. We'll come back to those. All right. We'll come back to those. Back to the district level boards response team. I want the meetings and the issues. I want to open up the opportunities for community participation and feedback. So tomorrow night is the in-person presentation in the high school TA. We're also going to screen the presentation. So for folks who want to follow along, there's a link on the district website. So we have several members of the district response team talking about all things health and safety as well as some of the protocols that we have in place as well as the
076safety protocols and other topics that the board and it's all at our last meeting. But it's an opportunity for parents and community members to learn more about our health. Is there anything recorded now? Is it recorded or just streamed? The live was just a stream of live. Oh, just streamed. They can record it. No, not. All the live streams are recorded. You can always go back to them on YouTube. Thank you. All right. Great. So the expectation for board members to participate. It's not a. It's more of a community presentation than it is anything . Especially the board saw majority of this information at our last meeting with the weekend safety presentation. This is more an opportunity for parent and community questions. Please send this all the way to me too. We were just talking
077about tomorrow night's safety presentation. 630. You want to hear the 10-second overview? Sure. So we have a safety presentation tomorrow evening at 630. It's at the high school TA. We also will be streaming it. Just if you guys want to watch it. So if you guys are interested in our data, focusing on some of our safety procedures, our drills, we've talked about the safety process as well. We've been talking about our safety protocols for COVID, for K-9. We'll get into just a little bit about the contact tracing component as well. And then we're about to move to any questions that the community has. So 630. 630 live in person. But we'll be streaming as well. Perfect. Thank you. Tony, do you have a question about the other? Do you have a UI number or you
078can go back? What? Just a question. Go ahead. Sorry. Actually, it's the last thing you're talking about with reporting. Will the session for parents that's on the 26th be recorded since we have our board workshop this evening? Yeah. It can be. It can be. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. My contribution is about the board workshop following the one Mike spoke about where we have a budget development workshop. We have a budget development workshop on the calendar. 7 to 8.30 it was mentioned. They were developing. What I'm here to do is on behalf of the Finance Committee solicit topics. What do you want to hear about? You can email me and CC John and Angie with ideas or topics. I will vision going out COVID together and basically our feedback will go to Amy and Cindy
079Jo, the drivers of the content that we're going to be doing. And then we'll get to the final part of the session. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll definitely talk about these at these, but they've asked your suggestions to me and we'll try to incorporate as many as we can with the idea that we won't be able to necessarily incorporate all of them if we have all the different ideas and some of them keep in mind may already be on the calendar to be discussed if they're more suited to the end of
080the budget development timeline in February or April, you know, to have a statement. Yeah. Yeah. that budget development will have, that may be more appropriate to about the time when this is to impact it. And so we may defer certain topics for emailing and we'll get that. The thing that I consider should be done fast is that it's the same night as our community meetings and maybe we consolidate our meeting times to allow the budget workshop just to start a little bit earlier. So we've done that in the past. Yeah, I didn't want to speak for any other committee. Can I throw that out there? Okay. And just so we can maybe start a little earlier than 7 and get everybody out. So pencil at 7, realize you may be trying to get out. We
081may be able to consolidate the community meetings or whatever. Yeah, perfect. I'll work on that with Tim. Okay. I did want to remind you of their work resolutions and setting the agenda for advocacy for this year. So if you haven't gotten a chance, take a look at that active. Give me your ideas. Please do. Meeting is next Monday. And let's put the policy meeting on the agenda. And I'll see you starting with that. Take care of that. So make sure you do that. Otherwise, I will consider my votes as a whole for all of us, not just Amy's votes. So I will consider where we all vote. Just one more announcement. This Thursday night is the first joint meeting of the Adirondack Area School Board Association with the Saratoga County School Board Association. So it's
082Queensborough Hotel. We're hosting Commissioner Rosen, who's the State Education Commissioner. She's actually spent an entire day in our area. So I'll be spending some time with her in the afternoon of it soon. Yeah, we're on that. So 530 is the program start. And I think based on the board's response and availability, Angie, John, and Connie will be representing the board. And then Lisa Cunningham will be our administrative team. So that'll be a great opportunity to meet with everybody from our office. And then our mission is the early night. So I'll just make sure that we have all the information. I believe everybody's got copies of the agenda for that one. And we still do not have a . Correct. OK. So members of the two board members, I wanted to recognize the incredible amount of
083work that's being done by everybody in our district. And I especially am so grateful for the upcoming diagnostic testing. And I just feel like our schools are providing so much for our community, especially to our children. And now we're doing more than ever. And it feels like every time that we meet, we're doing more than we were two weeks before. So I just think that that is really incredible. I recognize how much work is being done. I'm so grateful for it. And my fellow board members agree. So thank you to our district for supporting our community so well. Other board members? I would like to thank the team again for a great presentation and all the work that you're accomplishing and continuing to accomplish. Those are the things that we're doing. Those hallways sound much
084more comfortable to me, too, now with the crossing periods. And thank Dr. Gere for joining us tonight. It was a really interesting, fun night. I wonder how many staff are here. Teachers still sticking around and wanting to talk with us. So that was really great to be here. All right. With that in here, moving on to adjournment. Can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second? All in favor? Thank you so much.