001I agree to convene this work session meeting at 6.32. The board is returning from an executive session where the employment history of the person was discussed. Members, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I have your attention for a brief announcement. Upon fire alarm activation, immediate evacuation to the closest emergency exit is required. The emergency exits are located. over there um please exit away from the building so they're not to interfere with fire department and proceed to the evacuation areas please follow the school officials directions once assembled outside the building everyone must wait until a school official gets an all clear before re-entering the bill will the clerk please call the roll robert zachary upley here ronnie c pearson soon he's sure we're definitely here jermaine el smith this evening laura white here be white
002done like noah kent and matea are doing that does the uh clerk have any additions or deletions um president's comments here um the board of education will hold a regular meeting on tuesday october 7th 2025 at 6 30 in the intermediate school music the southampton athletic department is partnering with the danielle conti foundation to ride to raise money and awareness for childhood cancer september is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. In our varsity, junior varsity, and junior high fall sports teams will be swapping out their shoelaces for gold laces to show support for those families who are currently or have dealt with childhood cancer. We have several families in our community as well as staff members who are dealing with a child who has lost someone or battling with cancer. Please, you know, there's a QR
003code on the flyer that is attached to the meeting agenda. you wish to donate or um you know anything please go to that um it's a it's a great cause i think we've been doing this for a few years now with the yellow socks yellow shoelaces um and stuff but actually two weeks ago i had the opportunity to play in the golf outing for our middle school nurses son who lost like cancer so i i had the bracelet on here with the friendly friendly foundation it was a wonderful event there so um please if you guys reach out that'd be great So they also going forward at the intermediate school will be hosting open house on Wednesday, September 17th at 6 p.m. and the elementary school will have their open house on thursday september 18th
004at 6 p.m the elementary school will be hosting a parent university workshop on thursday september 18th from 5 to 6 before the open house there will be no school on tuesday september 23rd and wednesday september 24th at observance for rosh hashanah and there'll be no school on thursday october 2nd and observation of yom kippur That is all I got. I hope everybody is welcome back to school and we're doing great. My kids have been having a good time and very excited. We have not had a sick day yet in two weeks, which I think is a record. So getting all four of them out of the house is a positive thing. And oh, no, welcome aboard. Did you win your golf match? Okay. All right. So welcome. We'll get into our program presentations here. So
005we have the Latino Culture Club and the Latin Voices United to do two presentations. So the floor is yours. Good evening. My name is Gloria Palmer, high school E&L teacher and co-advisor of the Latino Culture Club. Thank you for having us tonight, all members of the Board of Education. So in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, members of the Latino Cultural Club are going to perform a dance, a mix of different rhythms from Latin America. that include such as merengue, salsa, national folk roll from the Ecuador and pop latino. We hope you enjoy. Muchas gracias. Thank you very much. Hi, good evening everybody. I'm here for the next present, the faculty advisor for Latinas, Voices United. I am so incredibly blessed and proud to have these young women in my life. There are only a few
006here, others have sports commitments and stuff like that, but I have four here that are going to present to you. what our club is about and the activities we have planned. Hi, how are you? My name is Anais Rosas and my family is from Mexico. Hi, good evening. My name is Genesis and my family is from Mexico. Hi, good evening. My name is Melissa Zamorano and I'm from Mexico. Hi, good evening. My name is Malia and my family is from Ecuador. From the slideshow you can tell that our club name is Latinas Voices United and our slogan is Use Your Voice. What is the purpose of Latinas Voices United? It has come to our attention that many Latinas do not get to go to college despite the fact that they get straight A's and participate
007in clubs while also helping our community. This is due to the lack of knowledge of opportunities that exist for Latinas and also the lack of knowledge of the parents. We created the club where all Latinas have the support and motivation to know that they can and will have a future. We want this club to show that Latinas We want this club to show Latinas that they have a voice and they should use it. Another goal we want to accomplish is that we want to show that we are more than the stereotypes. In this school, we feel as though we are often overlooked and it feels like we are being judged by the way we look, speak, and where we come from. These are the reasons why we feel like we need a club that stands
008up for Latinas in our school. And I would like to, I'm sorry, I'd like to, I'm sorry. One thing about our group is that we all come from different Spanish speaking countries and we want to create a safe place for Latinas who feel misjudged and want to speak up. And I can assure you that we have a great group of students that are capable of many things. We are organized, cooperative, and creative people. One thing we want to talk about is raising money to go to college visit and a visit bus tour around New York City and Sunday school during our free year. We are hosted at Latina Hispanic Food Fest on October 8th. With the help of donations from restaurants and or as our first official fundraiser, this is what the Latina Hispanic open
009mic night right after the food fest. Our goals and desires for this club. Some of our goals for this club is that we want to expand this club to different schools or potentially make this go global. We also want to raise money for future events and host a night where we talk about the steps of college, which is what I mentioned at the beginning of the slide, where the parents have the lack of knowledge of knowing about college. I did some research on the internet, and I found out that only 20% of Latinas go into college, and that's only the community colleges or maybe just two years of school. So if we narrow that down, it's more like 10% to 5% that go into four-year colleges. And we want to change that and make that
010go higher. So we want Latinas to go into four-year colleges or like colleges in the city, not just community colleges. And I also like to acknowledge that this club is meant for girls, like the only girls in Latinas. Latina Voices United in that Latina Voices United specializes in helping Latinas only. We are recruiting freshmen tomorrow during our club fair as well as speaking to East Hampton High School this year to help spread the word. The Latina Voices United mostly focuses more on culture and spreading the word about Latinos. Also, they focus on both female and male Latinos. Thank you for listening to our presentation. That's all. Thank you. Any questions? I don't. I don't have any questions. I would just like to say that it was just my honor to come to you all's event
011last spring and hear your presentation and all your hopes and dreams and desires and I'm just so proud of you and raising your voice and speaking up to be counted in the number of young women of Latina heritage going on to college. I also just want to personally say welcome to Latino History and Heritage Month. And it's celebrated September 15th through October 15th. in the United States and it recognizes the contributions and influence of Latin Americans culture and their contributions to the nation's achievements, culture and history and we are extremely proud of that in the Southampton schools and we just want to say thank you and keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hi everybody, can I ask you all a question first? Yeah, you got some questions. You guys are
012trying to run away from the podium up there. We got some questions. So girls, great job tonight. It was a great presentation. Thank you. Can you tell us what year are you in high school and where do you want to go to college? Sorry? Where do you want to go to college and what year are you in high school? Are you freshman, sophomore, junior, senior? I'm in 10th grade. I'm a sophomore. We're all sophomores, but we actually founded this club freshman year in the spring. And so far, I don't have a set idea of where I want to go to college, but I want to go somewhere in California, like UCSD or, I don't know, one of the UCs. Somewhere with nice weather and stuff. So for me, I am really into dancing. I've been
013dancing since I was about nine, eight years old. And I've also discovered poetry over the pandemic when we were in quarantine, so it was just a hobby that I picked up out of like boredom. So I don't have like a set college that I want to go to directly, but I am interested in schools about dance, maybe even opening my own studio, a lot of creativity and maybe like doing some slam poetry on the side. I don't really know what college I want to go to, but I am very interested in buying houses over... Real estate basically, yeah. That's what I'm going to do. So I don't really know what college to go to now, but I'm finding what good college to go to. I'm also a sophomore and I'm planning on going to college.
014I'm just not sure which college I should go, but as Melissa said, I do go to Raleigh State as well. We have such a good guidance department in the high school and even though you're sophomores it's still a good time to go down and talk to some of the counselors and They're they're getting busy right now helping all the seniors get their applications together, but their college is coming to visit And you guys should get a head start and get in there now and start asking questions because we have such a great guidance department. Yes, thank you. Good luck. Right now we have a lot of, we were just at the mechanic business info. They were gracious enough to give us a table and we made a lot of connections. So we have a Latina
015realtor who's coming in to talk to Amelia and everyone about real estate. And we have a woman coming in three weeks who's going to be talking to us about the importance of going to college. And who was the other woman that... Oh, the one about who wants to work with the parents on financial planning. And the woman from Saunders, what did she do? I think she wanted to help us with connections and raise money. Yes, she wanted to help us raise money. So they were all Latinas that were interested in what they were doing. But we have a lot of people from the careers coming in to speak to us about it and about college and college financing. And also at the Hampton Business Expo, we also raised over $400 for new t-shirts for the
016assembly we're going to be attending this Friday. I just want to say one quick thing. The fact that you guys came up here today and gave this information to the elected leaders is very powerful. You guys are ahead of the game. And I wish you guys well. And I hope that we can bring this attention globally, like you guys said. And yeah, have a good night. Thank you so much. I have one other question. Do you want to just tell us the time that the location where the Latino Food Fest in Open Lake is? October 8th at the Southampton High School in the cafeteria. What time does it start? 7 o'clock. And there's performers from outside the school, but it's open to everyone. So there's performers that have been in the school. One was who
017said he wants to go to Santa's Comedy Fest. Oh, how fun. So I'm pretty excited about that. But last year was great last year. So we're just adding a little bit more to it by having it as a fundraiser. Wonderful. Thank you. I just have one thing I want to say. I just want to say thank you so much for taking your time to come out here tonight. Would that mean there's a new showing? the younger generation. So, you know, and I just want to wish you... Thank you. And don't worry, when I was in 10th grade, I had no clue where I wanted to go to college either. I never even heard of my college that I went to when I was in 10th grade. So you got some time, but enjoy it. It
018goes quick. So thank you guys. Thank you for having us. Great. So we're going to move on to work session topics. Dr. Morell, over to you. Thank you, Mr. President. I'll have the... district strategic plan highlights i want to um thank the board for the opportunity to present an overview of the focus goals for the district strategic plan for 25-26 it's just been such a delight First learning our community and then learning about our staff and parents and students through hearing your voices as they took part in crafting the district's strategic plan. It's been a real team effort to get a five-year plan that we all can move in the same direction, rolling. our roles in the same direction on the vote. And so we have named it the Set, Sell, Soar Strategic Plan 2526.
019And I'll talk a little bit about what that means as we move forward. So what is the district strategic plan? The Set, Sell, Sort plan is a five-year overarching plan that was developed by district stakeholders and it serves as a blueprint for improving student performance, student wellness, and teacher efficacy. So it is essentially going to be the engine that drives the work of our district for this entire year and the next four. And so as we think about the strategic plan, and we coined it the set, sell, source to strategic plan. So when we set, we think about... preparing our course of action, preparing students, teachers, administrators, and parents with the necessary skills and tools, as well as resources to effectively implement the plan. The set is really laying the foundation for our success. That
020includes training and continuing to have robust conversations around data and what it looks like to move our district forward. during the course of this plan, we deliberately chart a new future in courses of action. So this is where we are going to launch into coordinated action. So not just talking the talk. but walking a walk and really moving into action with engagement and creativity, thinking outside of the box in new and innovative ways through utilization of the arts, technology, social-emotional learning opportunities, and culturally responsive practices that prepares our students for college and careers in the world, post-secondary world, that they will thrive in. And SOAR is our imagination. It's really believing in the... intellectualism of our students, the brilliance of our children, what they bring to the classroom already on their own, their imaginations, and
021cultivating the genius within them that's already there. But then adding on and creating opportunities for them to have the most successful outcomes possible. Really putting that oil in that engine through our... practices and our belief systems, our philosophies around educating all children. And so with that, we know that our students will achieve and soar beyond their wildest dreams in our imaginations. Our students, they don't have a problem with dreaming in their imaginations. We just have to get on the same page with them because they believe in themselves and we need to believe in them as well. And this plan will help us to do that. And so the plan was developed through an analysis of performance data, teacher, student, and community surveys. We had many surveys throughout the course of the year, but our district
022stakeholder meetings that we had during shared decision planning time was critically important where we were able to bring together our teachers, our administrators, our parents to really talk about what would be some of the key components and attributes of a strategic plan that would take us through the next five years. You may recall, esteemed board, in the past spring, we had many of our administrators come to the board and make presentations on the strategic plan to close out the year. We also had board presentations at other times where we talked about the strategic plan. And of course, with my direction from the board throughout the year, I was able to receive input on what... Is important to us when it comes to learning and growing our children and also We know that the strategic plan
023is in alignment with our set plan Which we are identified by the state right now for deficiencies in English language arts and mathematics for our Latino and our Students that are living at or below the national poverty level So all of that gel to create the four pillars of the strategic plan and so our focus is student achieve academic achievement social emotional learning and mental health supports science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics or STEAM, and culturally responsive practices. And under those four pillars, there are a plethora of action items and progress points that we will be working on and engaged in throughout the 25-26 school year. And so those focus areas are what I turn to right now because with the five-year plan, we had to decide as an administrative team and as a
024collaborative. What will we focus on? There are so many different, it's a 15 page plan. There are so many different areas that you can go into. So we chose strategically what areas will give us the biggest bang for our buck in our budget this year, but also where we can realize some real outcomes with grabbing onto that low-paying fruit for this first year. So, next slide. So the first area we focused in on, of course, is student academic achievement. And primarily under this here pillar, we are looking at effective teaching of literacy and learning. So that requires effective training. On the six pillars of reading instruction in alignment to the science of reading. Also, focus in on numeracy and the core reading and numeracy programs are pivotal to our success. We also want to make
025sure that we are piloting programs to update programs that we have been using for a long time where we may have been stagnant in our data and not seeing some of the changes that we were hoping for. But making sure we're staying avant-garde in terms of resources, that we're on the cutting edge of using the best resources that are out there for us. so that we We give our kids the best because they deserve the best. And so we're looking also to, we're currently piloting at our kindergarten for the magnetical program and the mosaical program in terms of literacy. We're looking at our iReady assessment data and platform to ensure that teachers and the teacher assistants really know how to use that data to inform their instruction to make. instructional improvement district-wide. And also always
026keeping our eye on the heartbeat of our multilingual learners and our special education students to ensure they are receiving the best in class supports, interventions, and services that we have to offer. And it looks like how do we update also our extended learning programs so that students who really really need the work we are intentional to ensure that those students who really need the support are actually staying after school or coming into the summer programs for that support And so when we look at, well, what will be some evidence of our progress in this regard, we're going to be looking at the success of pilot of the pilot projects around literacy, looking at to see if our K to eight teachers are actually using our diagnostic assessments effectively after professional learning. We should see continued
027improvement in our literacy in. math scores at the local in-state level and also just a proliferation of science-based and research-based best practices across our schools district-wide. In our social-emotional learning, we're already getting underway with that, establishing a task force to develop a shared vision. That task force will include parents and students as well as our administrators and teachers, but a district-wide task force that supports in developing a definition. What is our district definition of SEL? What does it mean to all of us collectively? Looking at surveys to... You'll see that coming out soon, community. Just asking you questions about what would be best ways to support our students in terms of social, emotional, and mental health learning and acumen. And then implementing a scheduled time where teachers consistently connect with the same groups of students.
028We know that relationships and creating those ongoing dialogues with a trusted adult is critically important for our students when we talk about developing their own self-awareness, their own concepts, positive self-concepts, and developing as young people. So we want to make sure that they have a person they can turn to in time of need that they don't feel alone. And it's critical that we build that infrastructure on a daily basis, like the way we're trying to do currently with our calming rooms and our mental health supports across the district and our guidance supports. And when we see evidence of progress for social-emotional learning, we'll begin to see things like a district-wide SEL framework that is readily available in a multitude of places, on our website, through the parent square, in our classrooms. But we want to
029use, you will see a use of surveys and screeners that regularly collect feedback from students. I know our student board member. has taught us so well how powerful a survey and getting student voice involved can be in making change for that outside program you created there, just for an example. But also, you will see that, but the experiences that the students will be able to speak to is really the power that we hope to engage throughout the course of this year. Improved attendance rates. When you feel good about school, You feel good to come to school and your attendance is better. Negative behaviors are decreased and you just show an increased engagement in school. And the more time on task, the lower our out of school time is, dropout rates decrease, and so on. And
030then implementation of community circles. We've all been trained in restorative justice techniques. We want to continue that training and move it. one step further in ensuring that our teachers have the skills, necessary resources, protocols, and practices to implement CIRCLES right in their own classrooms. In terms of STEAM. We want to offer district-wide professional development workshops for our educators on artificial intelligence applications. We know now that this is the wave of the future and we want to get out ahead of it. We want to ensure that our students are globally competent in technology. We know that too much technology is harmful. So how do we prepare our young people to use the best, out the best, in practice the best? research-based programs, applications, and technologies, and utilizing the New York State digital fluency standards for best
031practices in use of technology. That training needs to happen first. for all of our teachers. And then once that happens for our teachers, then we can roll that down more better in the classrooms and have systemic alignment where everyone's doing similar work so that students experience similar ever increasing rigor around AI and other technological applications as they move through the grades. But there's a common thread that's woven throughout the grades. Conducting a curriculum analysis to see where can we input some of the New York State K-12 computer science and digital literacy fluency standards so that our kids are able to see those as a daily interaction in the classroom and not that it's something special. But again, staying ahead of the curve on these cutting edge technological platforms and The AI, the programs that are
032coming out, the applications, making sure our students are on top of those. We already do a really good job with our coding and robotics classes, but we need to make it more system-wide for all of our kids. And that's what we want to do with the leadership of the executive director, but all of our teachers leading in their classrooms. And so evidence of success is really working with partners that really understand AI and have AI programs that they can help us to best implement with our teachers. Again, lots of training in this first year to ensure in partnerships to ensure that we're getting the best in class programming for our teachers so they can provide the best in class instruction for our students. But working with universities, technology companies. that can contribute to district workshops
033so that we know that we are getting it from the experts in the field. And also, we would see that, and we would see examples of how educators apply their AI tools in their classrooms, and it would be evident in lesson plans. It would be evident in student projects. You would see more digitized projects, classroom portfolios, project-based learning. and all those things would be evidence when you're running a STEAM focused instructional program. And finally, pillar number four, culturally responsive education. Well, we know that with such a diverse community here, we have to ensure that we are addressing the needs of all of our students, but that we continue to focus on implicit bias and how it impacts our teaching and our administrating and our... whatever we do, all the way down to, you know, all
034the way over to our, you know, cafeteria staff. We need to all understand that it can play a part. If we're not careful, it can be hurtful. But if we understand it, we're empowered by it. And so culturally responsive practices and sheltered instruction observation protocols for our limited English proficient students is... the order of the day when it comes to culturally responsive education and how we best provide for them so that they are successful. What interventions are we using? What are the research-based best practices around that? Are they, you know, they should have the best resources in front of them again. And that's what we intend to do. And then, of course, we've spent a year developing the Shinnecock Curriculum and Fusion Project, and now it's time to roll that out. So we should see
035that coming out fairly soon in our pre-K to 4 classrooms and then rolling up as the year goes down, moves ahead. And also diversifying our literature through our books and having our literature reflect the students that are in the classrooms, all of the students that are in the classrooms. And so that is very important to us. And then evidence of progress of that is just really utilization of those academic protocols in SIOP, word lists, lots of vocabulary, word walls, opportunities for translanguaging, looking at linguistics, understanding some of our experts. that come in that talk about multilingual learners and how they best learn using home language as a strength rather than a deficit and really developing our kids from that standpoint of as a strength-based program with their home language developing that classroom ecology that we
036do so well already in our elementary school and moving that practice from the elementary across the entire spectrum of our schools so we all have opportunities for every last student to be successful in our classrooms implementing that diverse curriculum you will see evidence of that you will see evidence of student voice in diverse books and having that ability to see and read about stories that reflect back at who they are And it's together. No one does this alone. This is Southampton soaring together. It's going to take all of us. It's going to take students, parents, teachers, administrators, our custodial workers, our security, our even, you know. Food is a big deal, right? Nutritious meals make a difference in how you drive in school, how you do well in school. It's all of us. A great
037bus ride into school in the morning. How did it go? All of these things come together that makes students who are... Learn it who are competitive can compete in our global society Can can be kind? understanding but yet have the skills in the resources in the intellectual capacity to go on to some of our top colleges and Just do the best work that they can do. But again, it's South Hampton soaring together less sore Does anybody have any questions? First of all, I want to thank everyone, Dr. Morell and everyone that participated in the work that went into putting this together. It takes a lot of commitment and time. working out all the details. So thank you for all those who participated. This is a very comprehensive plan. It's very impressive. But I just wanted
038to ask a couple of questions. Say on the student academic achievement, when it comes to the training of staff and then the piloting of programs, where are we in that part of the business? Have we started that? And where are we? And what's the timeline for that? Yes. So we were very fortunate that in our most recent contract with our STA and our partnership with our teachers that we were able to receive eight training days for teachers after school through contracts that would allow us to use those opportunities to begin to roll out some of the training around the science of reading, around AI around being a good teacher right best practices and old good old basics of teaching so that's one letter we also have the opportunity to move into great levels once a
039month to actually roll out some of this professional development and what we believe is important to us as a district that aligns with the strategic plan so timing is limited but it has to happen this summer We rolled out to 65 teachers our AI applications. We rolled out the science of reading, educating multilingual learners, and a few other key components right from the districts to keep in place. So yes, it has happened. We've already started our pilot program for our kindergarten literacy program over at the elementary school. And just a reminder, a pilot is just that. Like we're seeing if it works or not. And then we're going to go over to the middle school and we're going to pilot at fifth and sixth grade mathematics with iReady. Because iReady math is already at K-4.
040And so we want to have, go all the way K-6. Because we have seen success with I-Ready at K-4. We're having great success and now we want to move it into grades five and six for mathematics. So that will happen this year. So some of the work is underway already. It actually started this summer and a little bit of last year with planning because we kind of knew right around May or June where the community wanted to go with some of this based on surveys, based on all the meetings we had. So we didn't, you know, we started to move some of that work even at the end of last year. Great. Okay. And then just curious with the, I don't know, the social emotional learning, where are we in the process of designing and
041establishing center? I thought we had one at the elementary school, right? So, yeah, we have one at the elementary school. the intermediate school, we got that all set, the Heisenberg set. We found locations for that. You probably read my mind because I wrote down the same exact two things that you did. I'm going to ask Mr. Benson, the sensory room at his school, and then Mr. Robinson, if you can give an update on the status of the sensory room at your school. yes so right now we were waiting on a space so mr da silva and facilities graciously vacated their office area in the back of the building and the ceiling so they are currently at the office now so we are moving in our furniture we're waiting on some soft flooring painting there's a
042conference room that's attached that will be used for otpt so they'll have access to the common space we're going to poll the staff to kind of see what they want to call the space zen ben is early favorite but we're still working on naming of the room and then training our staff that are going to be in the room throughout the day on just procedures and protocols on making sure every student is utilizing the common space how do you notify when do you notify make sure teachers know we worked on that the first day we came back is a student that's behavioral or is in a common space and making sure that teachers were aware when to call the common space when to call you know for administration for behavioral support just making sure that
043we have that in place and then as a student is going through the process of coming back from an incident make sure they have access to that space so those things we did the framework and we laid that out right before all the space wasn't available and now that we're getting furniture in we're anticipating an october 1st ribbon cutting and opening and so we're excited it's exciting have to just use your cafeteria voice sorry about that um same for the high school uh we'll build the structure as well which is waiting for the furniture to kind of finalize that step we are going to mimic a lot of what the middle school is doing so this will when the students come up to the high school the name is the same the structure is the
044same so this way you have to continue it where where's the they identify the location uh that's what we're working on right now okay good to know Okay, and then I just had one more question about AI and collaboration and partnerships with experts, universities of technology. How is that going? Because it's here and... Yeah, it was great this summer. Dr. Long, want to talk a little bit about our summer AI? Absolutely. Actually, one of the most popular, I mean, all sessions over the Summer Institute, if you call, I spoke a little bit about this at my assistant student update. And we had, as Dr. Morell said, over 70 teachers, inclusive of all of our new hires, participated in five days of specific PD centered all around our strategic plan. One of the days was all
045about AI. So we actually had two of our companies, and AI companies come in that were really kind of the leaders in AI and education. So Magic School was one, and we had an in-person training with Magic School. They called their university training and provided a whole series of, not only about how to use Magic School, but how teachers designing the prompts and everything else, and how they can use those prompts to devise their lesson plans, college recommendation letters. grading, rubric development, all aspects of the professional setting for heat. We also had a second company that we worked with that's embedded into our Google platform that Brisk does some different things for AI. And again, this one is more specific to our Google platform. So teachers were trained on that. So those were the start
046of our kind of training in AI. And I can tell you the teachers were trained so much more. So those companies have also promised us they will come back, they'll work with us. And also they are the ones that are talking with some of these universities and schools and we're getting information from them. The field is moving so quick in AI that it's very hard for us to even keep up with it. And even the companies will tell you that as soon as they have one aspect of it, it just keeps coming from every direction. So right now we're trying to keep up. with the AI movement. One of the things that were actually one of the things at the National Schoolwork Convention was AI, implementing AI and one of the, actually also one of
047the common things was moving away from punitive discipline and that teachers should... With AI. Yeah, with AI because it's here and that... The schools that were successfully implementing AI in their classrooms had like a tiered curriculum. Like this one used no AI, this part of it used the AI for this. So teach the kids to responsibly use it. Right, to cite their AI sources. And I can tell you that's not that we're not immune to that. We're grappling with that also right now. You may have seen that. You probably know it's important to get board policy now and AI is built into that board policy. It's interesting because some people view the use of AI with plagiarism, but in a way it's really how you cite. the work and that's what we're trying to educate
048our kids on. So there was mass diffusion in terms of is it plagiarism, is it not? How do you properly cite AI sources? How do you not? So that's something that also we've been discussing in training and we roll out to our teachers because then they can roll out to their students on how to effectively use this because the last thing that we want to say is that we want to make sure that we're is students experiencing disciplinary issues because of improper use of AI, and more importantly, not only for now, but when they go to college. And it's really important that we train them on how to cite, because you can't use it. You just have to add, I've used AI in this statement. And they still have to verify, because AI is not
049100%. Absolutely. They still have to verify. Absolutely not. But part of the New York State digital fluency standards requires that we help to affect. So that's part of the work of the training. And I think we're partnering with imagine. And universities are also interested, right? So that's like the next stage. And then my last question is when we see a review of student surveys, how do we have a schedule? Like how frequently are they going out or what's the plan? Yeah, we just met with our, speaking of AI, we just met with. our representatives for our thought exchange program today because we plan to roll out a survey on SEL and developing the vision, the shared vision, the stakeholder vision for social-emotional learning and wellness. And so that survey, the first one will probably come
050out in about another two weeks. And then we will debrief that survey with our entire staff on November 4th when we have the attention of all teachers and all staff in our district. Once we develop that, we'll probably, because we also have, we have to always keep up on climate and, you know, climate survey, having that identification that we have. So you'll probably see another one rolling out in around January, February. But, yeah, we plan to do about three or four of those this year. But the first one will come out. And I met with our PTO today, and they promised that. once we send it out they're going to promote it at their meetings and we're going to make sure we get a lot of parent input um with the survey and we're going
051to get the students to do it during class time so that's easy great okay thank you so much can i add one more thing i just was thinking about um ai actually as dr merrill said when we were looking at door exchanges platform we were actually using our administrators meeting today as a little mini training on not only the platform but ai features within it and we were training our administrators on the power within the agent within the platform and it was a lot of fun it was amazing so we utilized even our admin meeting today a little mini pd for us all we use the platform and have you great thank you so much anybody else have any questions i just want to say thank you dr morale and to all of the people
052who had hands and doing this amazing set to elsewhere strategic plan. I just wanted to say I know that Ms. Graham is very happy to be in the area that she asked about pre-board member meeting. Thank you. Yeah, it's so exciting. I agree with the questions down here. Well, somewhere. Answered. So the first one I had written was the kindergarten pilot reading program, which you kind of touched on, because as a father and uncle of 10% of the kindergarten in the school, I just wonder how it's going over there with that. It's going well. Our teachers have had their first training. So we have been doing some pre-lesson lessons while we were waiting for the curriculum. Now we have all the curriculum. We have all the student materials, all the teacher materials, and now we've
053started to implement. So really looking. So today I watched not your son's class, a different class, starting to work on letter formation. Which teacher was it? It was Kaczynski and Hellman. Okay. So it's right next to me. I think one of the twins is in there. Yes. See, I told you. It's what he never thought. It really is. So I watched Letter Formation today. It's a really comprehensive program. I think it's going to do well. But we'll see. We'll see what the data says. It's truly a pilot, which is really nice. So we're really taking a look at teacher feedback and student data to see if it's effective. So we're really excited. Yeah, cool. So far, so good. Good feedback so far. So my second question, I actually wrote, Patrick, sensory room, which you also
054did. So yeah, I'm very excited to see that going. I know we proved that. So that's going to be great. I like this engine that sounds that sounds great now that you know you're rolling. And the other one I wrote on here, I know there's a lot of talk about getting data in state tests. So I know Melissa went to the PTO meeting this week. And to be honest, my wife is a big anti-state pet. But whatever your presentation on taking the state test and the importance of it, she came home and said, we have to take these tests. So I don't know if you want to elaborate on what you said to her. Because whatever it was, it was magic words. And now she's all about it. So I know we talked about it,
055but that's an important thing for what we do. look at our data yeah so i'm a great teacher here um so oftentimes you know i spent a lot of time preparing for the test and i think it's so important when we're looking at the strategic plan and we're looking at adapting curriculum we don't know if it's effective if our students a big population of our students aren't taking the test like we like to say oh this is working right like we don't have a big enough sample size to truly know if our curriculum is working And so that's what I'm sharing with the parents is we just want more information. And the information that we're getting from the state test is only helping us. So where are we falling short in, right? What can we
056do to better support our students? And then we also can look at these subgroups and see is the curriculum supporting these subgroups? So I think it's really important that everybody, as many kids, it's not hurting anybody, right? And it's just preparing them for the future. All of us have had to take a test online at one point or another, right? Just the practicing of the typing. I even talked about using the stylus and practicing the stylus. So often kids have this testing anxiety, but we can alleviate that by practicing how to take the test. I don't mean teaching to the test. I mean practicing the platform. Just kind of alleviating that anxiety. It's like a few hours, four days. It's not really a big deal. So I'm a huge proponent of having our students come
057and just join us so that we get more information to better serve everybody. Very well, what have you it worked? Okay, so it's good. So those are the three things that right now, but thank you guys for other questions So before we we get on we have a few other things we just wanted to talk about real quick during the work session topics First one was an educational program proposal between South and Art Center. I know they got a very generous donation from Merrill and James Tisch, and they want to do a series of field trips and stuff. And I don't know if it's something that really the board would need to approve because it's all day trips, but I think it's something that's important to talk about because everybody's starting doing this at the
058end of October. So Dr. Morrell, I do want to talk. So it's just an amazing opportunity, kind of just fell in our laps here, Mr. President, with the cheer woman. Simone Levinson and Mayor Manger, a nice meeting with them, bringing me in to talk about this $50,000 grant, hearts enrichment program for our students. And I was, of course, very excited and I am excited and so happy that they chose Southampton. But this will provide access and exposure. for our students to world renowned contemporary art to resident artists, local artists, as well as international artists who will broaden their understanding and spark creativity for our young people. They will ultimately be able to create their own art pieces which will be on public display in a renowned institution such as the Southampton Arts Center. And we're
059looking to work with all of our students and our teachers will be the ones who actually help to lead this work. you know, at the details level. But it's just a great opportunity for exposure for field trip and exposure to artists and also having, you know, that opportunity to create and to innovate themselves. And it falls right in line with the district's strategic plan. So I just wanted to, you know, ensure that the board is up on board. And after we work out all the details. I'll bring something for through the board if it's required October 7th. Thank you. Great. Thanks. And just to go this is this is not money through the school is a generous donation that was made to sell an art center to run these classes these programs and they want
060our kids to attend that stuff so I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's great community things. Simone Levinson is a wonderful person. who's at my wedding. So they do a wonderful job over there. I think this is a great experience that's going to happen over there. Chip, I have some questions. Yeah, I have a couple questions or just a couple things while we're investigating this to kind of move forward. They say in this communication that the transportation is coordinated through us. So my question would be, since these are 20 field trips, 60 students per trip, 10 trips each week. Number one are the art teachers. Has everybody been talked to about this? And what will these kids either miss or, you know, where will they be at in their schedule? So the art
061teachers really lead that. I know that they're going to love it, but does it work within their timelines and all these kids that have to come in and out? There's a lot of trips. So I'm concerned on that, number one. Also the transportation, if we are supplying the buses, will that be covered under the grant? We have transportation fees obviously. I don't know if anybody spoke to the transportation supervisor, but that's another thing to think about is can they get bus drivers in the middle of the day? That's kind of not a bus schedule and that's a lot of trips. So how much will that cost us? Or maybe we can wrap it all in there. That would be great. A lot of things right there to just kind of look at. Transportation will provide
062the buses and the drivers all going to cost us if if it's not covered under the grant So just things to look at I think it's a great opportunity for us and Anything with the arts on definitely a page want to make sure before we say yes No, we get the details. Yeah, and I think that's where I was. I know we she mentioned maybe have kind of a meeting with the building principles Hatch out details so we we got this and kind of just right now and we're looking at it's good a great opportunity and we just got a You know that there were 30,000 foot level. Well, yeah, we said stuff so I think this would be good and Yeah, okay. So maybe the questions we got got one more thing on the
063work session Um, the last thing I want to discuss was I know a few weeks ago Darren came in and did a presentation on the boards about sponsorships and then putting the money into a thing to do the meals and stuff so we had gotten um a ruling back from our attorney on what to do um i sent it to the board so i'm kind of opening up the discussion on how we want to proceed with this after reading the memo from wants to start i could start yeah we've read it or i have read it it's a definite no we cannot advert school district funded he has it down here as they know school districts shall give and shall not give alone any aid in any individual or private corporation so it kind of
064binds us up i know in here also there are some things about donations i would love to have him come and really explain i've read the the laws on this not that i'm a lawyer but i read it kind of differently I'd love him to come in and explain. a business wanted to take a message cheering on and have the business name as you know good luck selling from sea field center that would be okay it's just i think everybody that's more of like the direct of i'm a realtor buy a house for me on the board um as that's kind of the ad so um i know darren was looking for feedback from us i thought we would talk about it tonight and kind of give him Route I don't know if we want
065to ask him about running through the Mariner Athletic Club because he does have that Or if we wanted to just do like messages. Yeah, whatever we do. I'd like it just to be clean, you know So we are covered and I know this can be a little confusing Especially how I read it. So some of those things I just want to make sure whatever we do it's nice and clean and no one can come back to say Hey, you're doing it wrong. That's my tip I just want to add, I agree. Darren could come explain all of this garbage to us. Yeah, I mean, so Darren got the same thing we got from the lawyer. And then he actually yesterday kind of asked us, like, what are we doing? And then I wrote, I was
066like, I'm not 100% sure. You know, I looked at it. And so I said we would discuss it because he was kind of looking for guidance from us on which route to go. So, I mean, we could go back to the attorney and propose. those two situations as something, you know, like, hey, if we run it through the Marriott Athletic, or hey, if we get messages from the families or from people, where it was a general message, not a, like, not a phone number to call to buy something or a website, but just a message from a business. Yeah, that, and getting, and getting more clarification, because I know he cites, like, the idea of, like, you can sell chairs in an auditorium. and say like bought by you know whatever is by you know
067Squires and Pearson you know on it but you can't have a Squires and Pearson ad on the back of the seat so I think that would be the Document the documentation consent is very it's confusing to me because on the one arm it says that We are able to place donors Signs or insignia on a scoreboard, but it should be it should do so in a manner Which does not rise to the level of commercial advertising. Well, that's very subjective And so I don't know that, you know, it's like, yeah, you can, but don't do don't. Right. I don't know. So I think it would be prudent, as you stated, Mr. Pearson and President, that the attorney be more specific in explaining the do's and don'ts of this. Thank you. Let me go back to
068Mike about those two situations. clarification and I'll send it to you guys on that. So, cause I know they're, they kind of wait to see what's going to happen and getting rolling. Cause sports have started rolling and they want to do. All right, um Cool, so I mean you know that takes us on to the public comments at this time So the Board of Education encourages public participation in school related matters at board meetings any group or organization wishing to address the board Must identify a single spokesperson the presentation should be as brief as possible Those speaker will be ordered to speak longer than three minutes the board will not permit In public session discussions involving individual district personnel and students, all speakers are to conduct themselves in civil manner. Racism language, levitating statements, threats
069of violence, statements advocating racial, religious, or other forms of prejudice will not be tolerated. Persons making presentations at the board meeting will address remarks to the president and make direct questions and comments to board members or other district officials only upon approval of the president. So do we have anybody? Jill, you got something? You're sitting over there. Nothing? All right. Oh, I think Jackie's back. One thing I didn't feel in children's time, I've been, it's like nutrition and wellness, which is a big thing with me. But when will we really, we've got a lot of things we want them to do. It's like putting a whole bunch of other, putting a bunch of junk on my plate. and not giving me the substance that I need to do to. So we're losing, we want to
070give the kids, we want them to do this, we want them to do that, we want them to learn this, we want them to learn. I, when I think of SEL, it's the E in the middle. We don't take care of the emotional part. If we're not, if we're not well, we're not going to learn. We're not, we're not going to do anything. But she wasn't eating. She spent a lot of time going to the doctor. to do well, well take care of them. We were taught that things won't matter if they are not. So let's make sure that this emotional, social, emotional learning part gets here to help. All this professional development and everything, if we don't take care of our children properly, none of these things that we do will stop going on.
071I'm glad about this, so let's make them healthy. So I hope you heard what I said. Let's make them. Thank you. So now we'll move on to action items here. We have two items that we just need to vote on. So the first one is may I have a motion to approve the following resolution. Be resolved that the Board of Education of the Southampton Union Preschool District hereby appoints the retention of Jennifer. spring esquire to conduct an investigation into personal matters fdr really rate of 250 dollars motion by monique second um will the clerk please call the roll on the vote yes yes yes um second one here we're gonna make a breakout and then explain on this too so uh may have a motion to approve the overnight trip for juniors and seniors in
072the my brother's keeper and black girl magic club to visit hbcu colleges in northbrook virginia from october 23rd to october 26 um 2025 as presented motion second second so scotia i just want to explain this so um school policy is that um usually an overnight trip would be 60 days um approval to come in so we usually do not entertain that um prior but we were able to um sean smith and natasha jeffries put this together and they were able to get a grant that came in last week um for them to go visit colleges so we discussed about putting this on um program forward even though it's the 60 days it's supposed to be the um stuff on this and this as i would say is like component but this is like the exception
073to the rule and like you know i just want to make it clear we're not making this a pattern and i also know it's beginning of the school year so overnight trips kind of come up um early and that's something that if teachers if you want to do we should be getting those in during the summer um this one i think is a great opportunity because we're getting it fully grant funded that sean got um on there and i know that sean and natasha are the ones that put together so it's good so i don't know if anybody has any more questions i just i just wanted to explain this and i was just going to add that it is the start of the school year and i don't think they really had enough time
074to get approval with the 60 days and it's college season and they're going to historically black colleges and they need to see those schools yeah um How much is in the grant that was obtained? I believe it was around $8,500. I know in the presentation in the beginning for the Latino Voices, they were looking to raise money for theirs to go and see colleges. Is there something we can use some of this grant money to go towards their opportunity? I don't believe so because I believe this is just designated for the organization to apply for the grant. and then they're designated out so then once we approve this they have not like booked their flights or anything that all goes into the grant and then it kind of comes out little by little but i
075think it's something like i've been very impressed with sean and because they get a lot of grants and money and like we talked about that a lot but like they should be talking with sean and then saying how do we how do you get these grants and they get fly for it because it's i would just like to see those grants go equally to everybody yeah and uh that was a perfect example of you know they're out there hustling and doing donations so they can do the same thing we should take that money and cool it so everybody can use it for the exact same thing i think it's great yeah and i think a lot of it comes up to like the advisors of these folks too because they're the ones that will fill
076up yeah yeah so everybody as it were uh i would love like i'd love when our students take these field trips and when they come in and tell us their experience i would love for them to I want to know too if they're going down to Norfolk State because Michael Vick is either the coach down there or the football team, right? So will the clerk please call the roll? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. personal items you just have to so i have a motion to approve personal items 9.03 one through three as presented in the agenda um any discussion with it if not will the clerk please call the roll yes yes yes um great so before we enter i just want to comment on so last week I know there was a message with a
077kid that made some things online and that we took quick action as a school. So I just wanted to give a shout out to the kids in the school because you know as a 16, 17 year old when you see something come through I think it's very important that you say something to your parents about it. So you know we were in a training and I know you guys have seniors that saw it and they came right to you. So I think that's so important that the kids feel comfortable enough for their parents. For anything going on, I know it's a crazy world we live in and a lot of crazy things. And sometimes, you know, things that we need to investigate all of it. So I was very happy with that. And I know
078that night I called the resource officer, Kyle McGinnis, and he picked up the phone right away at 930. And he already knew about it all, was in touch with Franklin Trent, and they were going to investigate it all. And I talked to Herm Laminson, who also picked up the phone at 930 at night. So we're very blessed with the security we have, the police and the kids. I know everything's been handled and it's all going forward and taken care of and a memo went out this week, but I just wanted to give a shout out to our kids for saying that. The kids and the parents, they were very swift in acting and dressed very quickly, so I'm grateful for the parents who did as well. We stay safe when protocols are followed. I'm proud
079of you. Huey and James were saying something to you guys. That was good. The kids did. They said, you know, we have to tell... So there's no need to return to executive session here so may I have a motion to adjourn the meeting and 75 the motion by Monique the second second all in favor