Board of Education Meeting 6-10-25 7:00 PM

001session. The time is 7:03 p.m. 7:03. Everyone, please join me for the pledge. Motion. Oh, apologies. Motion, Mr. Gratchic. Do I have a second? Miss Kasa Korea. All in favor? I I That's unanimous. Please join me for the pledge of allegiance of the United States of America to the stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, at this time we'd like to invite uh Mr. Belaluchcci for the scholar athletes award. Okay, before I start, just for those who are new to this um ceremony, I guess part of the board of ed um meeting at the end of the year, we honor the students in grades 7 through 12 who have competed for three consecutive seasons and maintained a 90 or better average across all three seasons. And so we call

002that the three sport scholar athlete. uh just slightly different than New York State which um honors scholar athletes each season. So uh we do the elective um analysis at the end of the year and it's pretty amazing to see you know these high achieving kids playing three sports maintaining the 90 plus average. New York State doesn't round up so you can't even have an 89.9. That's their rule not mine. and I'm a math teacher for 20 years and I had to read that a few times and say, "Okay." But that's um so if that confused anybody, if you ever got an 89.9, I would give you the 90 in my class, but New York State is very strict with that because they give out um they give out some of these pins and everything else.

003So we, this is our polling high school award, polling middle school award for intercolastic athletics. So, it's my honor tonight to recognize these 50 students from grades 7 through 12 for achieving something that is just really incredible in my mind. Um, we'll start off with the seventh grade and uh Dr. Fontana and Dr. Kirkus will be giving out the certificates and pins. So, what we'll do is have you come through to the front. Let me pass along the board like you're on stage in a way. Uh, grab your certificate and pin and then we'll uh line up everybody over here in this uh open area. Okay. So, we'll start with the seventh graders and then if there's enough enough room, we'll keep everybody in the open area. If we have to use the uh the

004other side, we will. And then maybe we'll get a a picture of each grade level and then the the full picture of all all the kids. Okay. And as I told a few uh few of the kids in the back, if I say your name wrong, that's your name for the rest of your life. Just live learn to live with that. Griffin Arnold. Oh, I'm sorry. Started on the wrong side of the page. We're going to go high school first. Adriana Benadetto [Applause] Dylan. Okay. Preston Donnelly. Sophia Geron Augustine, Kylie Amando, [Applause] Rosanna Kabashi, [Applause] Let's uh lock it. [Applause] Michaela Maker, Eli Moseri. Congratulations, Matthew Maziotti, Zuri Mono, Emiline Murphy, William Oxer V 6th, Rea Tui. Okay, there are your seventh graders, three sport athletes 90 and above. [Applause] Hey, a chance for a

005photo op before we start the eighth grade. And I expect at least one or two math teachers out of this group. Come back and coach in Pauling. Hey, eighth grade, Marcus Uton Smith. Thomas Wen Smith, Caroline Clark, Grace, Kazaka, [Applause] Andrew Crannle, Benjamin Randle, Duo Dorp, Max Fiddler. Gabrielle Gdard. I'm going to bring it over to a friend. Anna Brown, Killian Gribbon. [Applause] Isabella Hernandez, [Applause] Henne Joseph Lebron, Lopez, Alisa Miselli, [Applause] Eden Pit, Danielle Trent, Haley Tunny, Hey, these are your eighth grade three sport scholar athletes. [Applause] Marcus, could you come down a little bit? Marcus, come down before me. Thank you so much. I think Okay. High school next. [Applause] They gave away the secret on this one. Griffin Arnold, [Applause] Nathan Burus, Jordani Cabrera, [Applause] Gavin Campbell, Jeremy Kazaka, [Applause] Hudson Garino,

006Danick Gdard, [Applause] Kevin Greco, Juliana Nolles, [Applause] McWills, [Applause] Caleb Pendalfo, [Applause] Isabella Papa Rebecca Smith, Aiden Taylor, McKenzie Wall, Elizabeth Walsh. Okay. Lucas Walsh. [Applause] and Caitlyn Whis. [Applause] Okay, not an easy thing. And again, congratulations. Stay there for just a couple uh seconds for a photo op. This is your high school group. You guys slide down this way maybe just a little bit. Okay. And uh one last time, round of applause for these high achieving student athletes. [Applause] Can we get another round of applause for all our student athletes? [Applause] That is fantastic. And that sets the right tone for our next um the next person that I'd like to introduce. Uh on on behalf of the board um I'd like to welcome uh Mr. Anthony D. Carlo. Um the board um has

007engaged in a process over the past several months um to seek a new uh interim superintendent. Um and we interviewed several candidates um excellent qualified candidates, but Mr. D Carlo stood out to us as somebody that has a wealth of experience over four decades in education in the classroom since the 80s. um then later becoming a principal to director of curriculum to capping off his career before retirement as a as a superintendent in Mayak. Uh he does not shy away from challenge and I am happy to let you know sir that you are inheriting a district that is in good health. As you can see our students achieve and we have an engaged community and we're all here to welcome you. So, please please join me in welcoming our new interim superintendent. Panel, [Applause] I'm

008going to speak loud because it's raining. They say rain is good luck. So, there you go. So, to President Oy, Vice President Walsh, the the board trustees, to the community that's home and can't be here. Um, also, hi to you. But I want to thank the community for the the board for um bestowing this in position. Um I'm excited about it. I apologize if I didn't get around to say hello to all of you. But I will promise you over the course of this next school year 25 26 you'll be seeing a lot of me because um come 4:00 I'm out and about. I'm at games. That's my therapy. Um those of you who received honors tonight, congratulations. It's not easy to maintain a 90 average. Uh those of you who are seniors who are

009going on to college, um I wish you all the best of luck. I congratulate you. And to the parents, I congratulate you for your hard work, your determination, your encouragement because this doesn't just happen overnight. It happens through years and years of your dedication, hard work, wanting your students to achieve the best they can. And these are the kind of rewards that you get. You'll notice seventh and eighth graders when the high schoolers were up there. It's difficult as you go through each year. It gets more and more difficult and it's going to get more and more harder. But I will tell you, listening and seeing you tonight, the world is yours. Go out and celebrate it. Enjoy your summer. To the board and the community. Um, yes, I'm an entrance superintendent, but I can

010tell you I won't act like an in superintendent. Um, meaning that, um, I'm here to do the best that I can. I'm here to be helpful academically, social, emotionally. Um, you'll see a lot of me. Um, I'll be doing Friday what I call updates every Friday. I'll be doing superintendent corners updating you on the the things that are happening. But it's what really important to both parents both here and and out there who are watching. Parental voice and student voice is really so important. We need to get your thoughts and your opinions. This is a great school district, but we know we could always continue to do better each and every year. So, from myself, I want to thank you, the board, for taking the confidence and letting me be in. I look forward to

011working with you, um, and then hopefully transitioning whoever the new superintendent may be for the 2627 school year. I wish you all a great summer, health, happiness. Enjoy it with you, your families, not only you here, those of you out in the uh watching on TV and in video, and to the board. Um, I thank you because I know that, you know, you put a lot of hours and time and dedication into what you do. Um, and I look forward to being a team and working with you. Um, and thank you very, very much. Take care everybody. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. And the feeling the feeling is mutual. All right. Uh moving right along. Um if anybody um would like to you're probably going to be just fine here for a little bit. So

012let's jump right into a multi-tered systems of support update. Um Dr. Kirkus. Thank you. Good evening. Tonight you will hear from some of our instructional administrators about the multi-tiered systems of support in our schools. I'm joined by Miss Rivas who will share some information about the elementary school and Mrs. Gleason who will share information from the middle and high school. Mrs. Ken could not be here this evening because she is a very proud mom tonight and is actually attending her son's graduation from his medical residency. The purpose of this update is to provide you with some information about our current processes along with the intensive work we have done in this past school year to improve and expand upon these processes. We will also give you a sense for the next steps we look forward

013to taking in the 2520 school year and beyond. So what is MTSS? Multi-tered systems of support is as a is a systemic evidence-based improvement framework in which databased problem solving and decision-making our practice across all levels of the educational system. ESSA which stands for every student succeeds act defines MTSS as a comprehensive continuum of evidence-based systemic practices to support a rapid response to students needs. And that includes academic, behavioral, social, emotional, student physical, and mental health with regular observation to facilitate databased instructional decision-m that supports all learners. It ensures equitable access to a rigorous, robust, highquality education beginning in pre kindergarten. Many of you might be familiar with this support triangle on this next slide. This image is from NICED's website. This triangle outlines the different tiered supports we provide our students. Tier one is

014considered to be the universal instruction and interventions provided for all students. Roughly 80 to 90% of students respond favorably in this tier and remain on target needing no additional interventions or support according to this triangle. Tier two is where targeted interventions occur for some students who are not responding favorably to tier one instruction and interventions. Typically we expect 5 to 15% of students are in this tier receiving more targeted interventions. Tier three, the very top of the pyramid, is where intensive interventions are utilized for a few students who were not responding favorably to tier 1 and tier 2. Typically, we would expect to see roughly 5% or so of our students in this part of the pyramid. As you can see from the pyramid, the biggest portion is the red section, which is tier one

015instruction and support. The foundation of MTSS as depicted in this image is in tier one instruction and interventions. The foundation for a successful MTSS system is in quality evidence-based core instruction within the general education system. This has been the focus of a great deal of our work this school year. Again, MTSS is a data-driven decision-making framework for improved outcomes. On the next few slides, I'll delve a little deeper into the different tiers and what they mean. And when our uh building level administrators come up here, you'll hear a little bit about what it might look like in the buildings. Typically, like I said, 80 to 90% of students, that's what we would expect to respond well to tier one instruction and interventions. For it to be effective, it must have high quality and researchedbased instruction

016and materials. What tier one might look like in the classroom includes it being delivered by appropriately certified classroom teacher and/or teaching assistant using best practices and district approved curriculum. We would also expect inclusive instructional practices are used. Differentiated instruction is the norm in all classrooms and culturally responsive teaching is clearly evident. There are schoolwide behavioral expectations, social emotional learning programs and positive climate initiatives are also incorporated throughout each building. There is universal screening administered at regular intervals. There's ongoing data collection to inform instruction and identify students that might need additional support and small groupoup instruction and interventions that are provided by classroom teachers andor teaching assistants so all students get what they need. And that's basically the premise of MTSS is that we're meeting students where they are and providing them with what they need.

017And that was tier one, what we would expect in all our classrooms. Tier 2 is where more targeted interventions come into play based on data and where classroom teachers and or interventionists are working with students who have not responded to the tier one instruction and interventions. In MTSS, it is expected again that between 10 and 20% of students might fall in this category needing this level of support. What this might look like in classrooms includes targeted support provided in addition to the tier one instruction. Since the best interventions are those that are actually integrated into the learning, many tier 2 interventions are facilitated by the classroom teacher or a teaching assistant in the classroom. And that's very important because that's where the learning is the most relevant. It's the most timely and the teacher knows

018his or her students the best. There are smaller and additional group interventions focused on a specific skill areas such as perhaps phonics, math fluency, or self-regulation practices. There also could be evidence-based programs delivered by interventionist specialists again or classroom teachers. Again, the support is individualized for the student based on the student's need. Progress progress is monitored regularly regularly to determine student response and effectiveness of the instruction. Entry and exit decisions are made by teams using multiple data sources. And that's tier two. Those are for again we would expect 10 to 20% of our students might fall in that category. Finally, tier three is where intensive interventions happen for those students with significant or persistent needs. Typically, this is for only about 5 to 10% of students who need this intensive level of support. What this

019might look like in the classroom includes customized and highintensity interventions designed to meet individual student needs. It might include one-on-one instruction or highly specialized smallroup support. It might include involvement of multidisciplinary teams including special education specialists, mental health professionals, and behavior specialists. It might include a functional behavior assessment, what we call FBAs, or individ individualized academic plans as appropriate. And there's frequent prog monitor pro progress monitoring and adjustment based on student response. And again, entry and exit decisions are made by teams using multiple data sources. I mentioned this on a previous slide um that the key component of effective tier one because that's been a lot of our professional development this year is around tier one and tier 2. But a key component of effective tier one instruction is differentiation within the general education setting.

020Education educators in Pauling Central School District use differentiated instruction to meet the needs of all learners. Differentiation involves modifying what is taught, how it's taught, and how students show what they've learned based on their unique needs and what teachers know about their students. Again, differentiation is at the heart of effective instruction. Some ways our teachers differentiate in the classroom include content differentiation, which involves adjusting the curriculum's focus, information, or skills to match a student's readiness levels. Instructional differentiation, which involves diversifying teaching methods, activities, groupings, and timing to align with how students learn best. product differentiation, which involves varying how students demonstrate their knowledge to reflect their individual strengths, skill levels, and understandings. And again, these are all part of tier one, what we would expect in tier one and in our classrooms. As part of

021our year-long professional development, we've learned that an effective T MTSS system needs four key components that are listed on this next slide. And during these PD sessions, both at Boseies and within um our in-house, we've spent a great deal of time analyzing our own systems alignment with these four components and will continue to do so moving forward. One component is systems capacity and this is the ability for a district or school to implement and sustain the framework using sustained resources, staff, material development, family engagement and ongoing professional development and leadership. Another component is of course the most important component, instruction and intervention. This is characterized by effective, efficient and culturally responsive learning environments that are matched to the learner. evidence-based instructional practices and relevant appropriate assessments continue to monitor progress. Another component is our assessment

022and decision-making processes. This involves a team approach to the identification of an actual gap based on assessment data. The implementation of goals and a plan to address the problem and evaluation of instruction through progress monitoring data. The teams can be fluid of course based on the particular issue at hand. And the final component is the uh program fidelity. For an intervention to be effective and work, it must be implemented as intended with fidelity. And this does require continual and active monitoring. This next slide talks a little bit about the specifics behind the professional development we've gone through this year and some of the work that we've done as a district and in our buildings. I mentioned earlier that we've had a year-long professional development for administrators through Duchess County Boseies that guided our work. The

023title of the training was was developing high functioning MTSS teams. The workshop series provided support to build MTSS teams or expand on existing ones. We were joined by school districts from across the county in this PD and we collaborated with one another and shared best practices. Topics in the series included an MTSS overview and teams operations, the role of the administrative team, fidelity here to overview, coaching tools and protocols. And this work these workshops will continue into next year. Tier one and tier 2 strategies were the major focus of the professional development since this is the core and foundation as I mentioned of an effective MTSS system. More professional development was requested from all the districts that attended in this particular area in tier one and tier 2. Duchess County Boseies has also started an

024intervention toolbox as a way of gathering a variety of tier 2 interventions and monitoring tools for districts to contribute to and to tap into for ideas. And much of what was learned during these sessions was turn was then turnkeyed in each building at faculty meetings and department meetings by our administrators. In addition to this year-long work, we had consultants actually join us for each of our conference days and spend time with our entire teaching staff on MTSS. Topics of our conference days included again MTSS overview, the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders, the teachers role in providing tier 2 interventions. There was a great deal of work time um set aside for staff to capture tier one and tier 2 instruction that they're actually doing. and interventions across all different classrooms and also time

025to research additional tier 2 strategies to assist struggling students within each of their classrooms. And again, this work will continue into next school year. So, what are our next steps? And I mentioned some of them before, but again the the key key thing here is the continued professional development. It was very telling in both of my um meetings in uh Putnham Northern Westchester Boseies as well as Duchess County Bosey's um assistant superintendent for instruction meetings. um that this that that MTSS continues to be an area districts are seeking more and more professional development and collaboration around because our students are more and more complex inhouse. There will be continued uh conference day time set aside for MTSS work next year so teachers can get together and collaborate and research best practices, work with consultants and

026expand upon the toolboxes that we have. We are currently working on a written framework that outlines the MTSS plan K12 to be housed on our website. It's in a draft form now and we will continue to work on this written framework at our administrators retreat this summer along with uh help with our consultants that we've worked with and uh others that we are interested in working with. We this will be a fluid document like many of our other plans that we have um and will be updated regularly again based on student need and and um information we uncover from our data. Again, there will be continued work uh by Duchess County Boseies in in collecting um a da um a framework, a database of tier 2 and tier one best practices that all districts, all

027of the districts in the county can access. As was mentioned, the importance of a strong tier one and tier 2 in interventions within the general education setting were the main focus of the professional development and will continue to be moving forward. Boseies has committed to providing a series of uh a series of workshops that teachers can choose from next year based on their specific areas uh whether it be math, social studies, ELA, science um or skill development and teachers can kind of it's like an alleart menu they can attend one they can attend all and really it's it's based on their own needs and this is in development and part of the work I'm doing with Boseis with the other ASIS at this point at At this point, I'd like to actually turn it over

028to our elementary school principal, Mrs. Rivas, who will give you an idea about what MTSS actually looks like and functions in the elementary school. Before I do, it should be noted that historically we use the term instructional support team for these teams in our building. So, you'll hear IST, instructional support team, when it comes to the building level work in this area. Dr. Can you can you just hang because I think there may be a couple of questions. Thank you. Can I just ask one quick question, Dr. Fergus on the uh last slide before this one you have currently on the board. It just says therefore additional professional development was requested was right at the Yep. The next slide right here. Yep. At the very bottom it says therefore additional professional development was requested in

029this area. Was that request from the team that participated in the DC Bosey's uh trainings? Was that request from teachers after being turnkeyed? What is that request specifically? It I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, it was it was actually both. It was the work that was done with the consultants here. They uh consultants turned it over to teams of teachers to work in their grade level groups or content area um math, science, social studies, etc. Um in reviewing some of the research, some of the actual toolkits that are out there, the question was asked for them to commit to try one new intervention moving forward. Um there was an area and there was exit tickets where teachers uh provided things that were going well, things that they would need more support in and

030it was it it's very clear that teachers would like extra support on how they can implement I mean when you think about it you know uh class time goes quickly there's a lot of students so how can we do this as efficiently and as accurately as possible gathering the data we need for on students and how can we provide the support that we that the students need. I had one more too before um turn it over. So um obviously this whole slide is titled MTSS next steps. Um as a at the district level and I'm going to ask the same question at the building level, but at the district level, is there going to be like an official like vision or two to fouryear plan or is there going to be something drawn up to

031that nature or is it more um you know more procedural month-to-month type thing? like is there something bigger picture that's going to be constructed of where we foresee ourselves getting to in 2 years, 3 years, four years or is that kind of beyond the scope of of this? I think the document we're working on kind of captures a little bit what you're talking about. I mean ideally we I mean the goal is to assist students and improve outcomes. I mean that is that is what we're hoping to see across the board. We are actually as you know if you have elementary students we we're incorporating new curricular materials. So, one of the things I want to see is how how how is this affecting our outcomes? Um, we're looking at literacy pro you're going to

032hear this a little bit more from Mrs. Rivas. We actually are currently looking at literacy programs because you know we have uncovered some gaps. Um, but that that's I think some of this will be captured in our in that document that we're working on. Yeah. I thank you. May I also add that of course it MTSS dovetales very nicely with the uh vision area of academic excellence as well as belonging and wellness. So those core teams and I'll give an update a little bit later are identifying action steps over the next 18 months and surely um those core teams are going to identify action steps that relate to MTSS in both uh social and emotional areas and belonging and wellness as well as in the academic areas. I think I think that goes without saying,

033don't you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think the MTSS is it's a work in progress and we are not alone in this which is which was a little reassuring you know um as attending these different sessions. Um and I I see this as being part of our goals for not just next year to be honest. Uh so a few slides back there was a bullet on program fidelity. I guess when I when I read that I think uh you can't you know manage what you can't measure. is that so how like how do we go about understanding uh you know like the continual and active monitoring to figure out if what we're doing is working or not well with if we're talking about monitoring outcomes there's a slew of different data that can be used

034including I mean our reading levels of students our assessment scores um attendance data referral data um special education um classification ation rates. These are all things that we can look at for from year to year and see where there might still be bigger gaps than others. To to follow up on that, I think that's a great answer and a great question. Does does this slew of data, attendance, referral, reading scores, um does this exist in a place where it communicates with each other where the teacher can easily access this um or is this something that is kind of separated into its different components and you have to you know log into making you know frontline to get this, you have to log into school tool to get that, you have to is does this exist

035in a centralized location for easy access or no? A great deal of this information is available to teachers through school tools. Um, some of it is separate databases that we use, but um, there's different teams in each building, like there's an attendance team, which you're going to hear about. Um, and the IST team, they they analyze this data. In the elementary school, there's a data team and they look at a variety of data as well. And it's safe to say these teams probably communicate with each other. Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. And and the administrator kind of is kind of the cohesive piece of all, you know, the pieces. So like the admin of the building will be the the crew that will involve or the admin one of the admins are involved in each of

036the teams. Yes. And then thank you. And then also um you mentioned uh cross trainining and sending folks from the district to Bose. Is any more cont who who do we who did we send or like what parts of the staff get sent for that? We had some inhouse actually another yearong which m Mrs. Divas will discuss a little bit later uh with data teams actually and that was that actually started before last year and it went into this school year we're in um and that was in-house where a group of teachers met with the consultants here which is actually ideal because it's less travel etc. And those were I believe they were full days in the um middle school sorry just to um like who on the who in the at the building like

037who what folks are meeting with these Boseies teams from our from our district from our staff is it a lot of people or is it just a few well I think for the data teams my understanding and help correct me if I'm wrong Mrs. Rivas is we had our literacy coaches we had teachers from a variety of different grade levels we had an admin educator intervention services teachers. Yes. I mean that's just an example initially. Thank you. Yeah. I just had one question. Um on the tier three it mentioned frequent progress monitoring. What what do you mean by frequent? Is that done three times a year, four times a year or Oh, more than that. So I'll give you just one example. If a student qualifies and typically this this is special education service for

038um specialized reading, again this is for the smallest percentage of students. Um there's a whole component of progress monitoring within the program that there's constant constant uh data collected uh miscue analysis of reading. It could be um assessments that are built into the the program they're using, but it's it's more than three times a year. Yes. So just to follow up on that, do they have do we have a specific progress monitoring system we use or is it a variety of things based on the level or could you just speak on that? Sure. And and again I'll let the uh the building level people speak a little bit more in detail but what uh these IST meetings that occur frequently it's it's a series of data points based on that specific student's need. Whether it's

039a social emotional need, it could be data that's collected in the classroom of on task, off task, uh simple checklist, that could be a simple thing that's that goal for that student. If it's a reading, uh we we uh we look at student work. We look at student writing pieces in the I'm just again talking about the data team at the elementary school. I know that they did a whole schoolwide um school uh student work protocol and review of student work of a written piece based on main idea. So things like that and then they're going to pro they do it again midyear, end of year. We have the NWA uh assessment that's used in all three buildings. I'm just giving a slew of things but it really is based on whatever the students need

040is is where the progress monitoring comes in place. And again going back to that um warehouse of tier one, tier two, there's actually a column of progress monitoring tools uh worksheets, you know, things that teachers can quickly collect data on students based on what they're what the issue is that they're uncovering. I don't want to ask another question, so I'll just your your your batting order here. the folks that are going to come up and speak after you. Um, we'll be talking about like how that data is tracked, measured, and access. That's where my questions mostly are. You'll hear Yes. You'll hear what the IST team does when students are brought. Yes. And I want to ask you another question. Yeah. That's that's basically the IST process. No problem. I have one quick thing in

041addition to that. I've been waiting for this presentation all year, so I want to make sure I understand it fully. Um, so with the IST, so the IST is given all this data, right? And that's a a team of four, five, six people, I imagine, depending on um the building, right? Um are is the is the data that they're given um obviously those are experts in the field that are utilizing like are teachers able to disagregate that data as well? Like are teachers trained to understand what this score on that means or you know do do we understand what all these different acronyms are? um um you know we just spent five or six slides teaching which I think is a great start to this presentation. I guess my question is when the IST team

042looks at the data they probably have a certain level of expertise. Are our teachers trained in the same way? As a teacher myself I I will admit that there's lots of these things that I need to even look into. Are our teachers trained to disagregate the data to really know what that child needs, what that data is saying or do you think that that's something perhaps that we can do more of? do we need to do more of? I would just love your opinion on that. No, that that's a great question. I mean, that's why you bring a team together. So, if it's a behavioral that's that's the whole idea about a team approach to data. So, if you have a behavioral issue, you're most likely going to bring a counselor in, a psychologist in,

043might be the social worker. Um, it might be a teacher who's actually really adept at that type of thing, you know, that type of behavior. you know, they they work they work the best with a student who's typically disengaged. I'm just you know, you know, you're Yeah, understood. Typically, that's that's why even the team is pretty fluid based on what is the issue at hand. If it's an attendance thing, likely the school nurse is going to come into into the the uh analysis of data because they're the ones that can actually say, well, if you remember this is this and there was a death in the family here or there was a uh you know a a surgery here. I mean, these are just like pretty um basic uh examples, but um the bottom line

044is it's a group of uh staff that comes together to look at the data and answer those questions. But to your point, at the end of every session that we do, we always ask for an exit quest exit ticket and the last question on there for every teacher is what do you need more of? And that was what we did. So that information is what we use as we plan. And of course the administrators are in tune to where there might be um some additional needs and that could you know and if that is something I can bring in the consultants in to help us look at the data. Um when we look at state assessments I'll just give you that example. I mean there's a way to really drill down into some of these

045assessments and it does take a little bit of uh practice. It's not difficult. is just practice and how we can look at some of these uh hone in on different standards that you know we're seeing gaps in compared to maybe other districts or com or just compared to last year. So that's another level of it really depends on the specific issue or gap that's being uncovered you know who you bring to the table and then if there is a need of course we're going to provide it. so much. You're welcome. Shirley, how do the um MTSS teams develop? How do you, you know, choose who's on the team? What's the process with that? Again, it's it's based on the stu the the issue that's being brought up. If it's a behavioral issue, it's might be

046a little bit of a different team. If it's an academic, if it's a reading problem, we obviously bring in the literacy coach, uh maybe an AIS teacher, the classroom teacher, um the administrator, uh if there's a special educator that might uh provide some insight that would be brought in. So, it's a little bit fluid that way. I offer one more thing and then I promise I promise that's it. So, just to summarize kind of what we've been through. So tier one universal instruction for the entire class, you know, 80 to 90% of students are going to respond to that. We're focusing on high quality re researchbased instruction. We're looking at different things. Literacy, you mentioned as a result of gaps at the elementary school. Uh tier two, the instruction interventions obviously more targeted. We want

047the teachers in the classroom to be able to carry out these supports, but we recognize that we probably need to make investments in professional development for tier 2 to be the most successful and Pauling that teachers requested per your answer in that one that um more professional development and and things related to that would be a good use of resources. And then tier three um obviously the most specific um there we we talked about progress monitoring. We talked about how these things exist um mostly through I think you said school tool I'm sorry um what did you say most of the data exists within when we're we talk about attendance grading um so we said that these things are existing that teachers have access to looking at all these different things and obviously these teams

048that are being created um are communicating with one another um and that this frequent pro progress monitoring is taking place you said three plus four plus times a year Um and then from there the differentiation is taking place and we're drawing all this back to those four pillars of the systems capacity, instruction, intervention, assessment, decision-m and program fidelity to make sure that all this that we just kind of spoke about is taking place and taking place really well. That's what I got so far in the presentation. I think is that okay to absolutely. Okay. Yes. Thank you so much. No problem. Okay. I think now you're off. Well, good evening. Um, thank you for all those questions because I really it helps like um for you to kind of have that in your mind. You

049know, I think we're speaking to um you know the questions about trying to really in your mind really think about what does this look like on your level. I'm going to talk a little bit about what this looks like on in at elementary school. Um so as Dr. Kirkus described our MTSS is a tiered system of supports for students. Um at the elementary school we have the following teams that support MTSS. Our IST as was mentioned is our instructional support team which is comprised of an administrator. Academic interventionists or AIS teachers as we refer to them um in reading and math or sorry AIS reading and math teachers, classroom teachers and literacy coach. our social emotional learning team or SEAL team. They are members are psychologists, school counselor and administrators. Our attendance team is our

050guidance counselor, our school nurse and an administrator. So our IST um how is IST? So those are the people that are on our teams that comprise these pillars. And we also have our data team which I'll talk about a little bit later. Oh, thank you. So how is a referral to IST initiated? So an IST referral is initiated by classroom teachers and the IST team based on some data points. Um those data points include New York State ELA and math scores for students in the upper grades that do take those assessments. Uh the NWA uh maps uh measures of academic progress. Um this is the first year this year that we're using that as our universal screener. So we are um we have administered the maps three times this year in the fall, in the

051winter and now in the spring. Um we also look at reading benchmark scores. So our running records are up on panel are reading levels and importantly student work samples, right? We look at student artifacts, um curriculum based assessments, pre and post tests. So a classroom teacher is always looking and grading papers and looking and and looking at student work, looking at writing and if a student if a teacher notices that there is progress not being made and after some tried interventions in the class has some concerns a referral is made on behalf of the teacher to the IST team um and samples and a lot of work is collected on behalf of the teacher and brings it to the team. So that is how it's initiated. Um so next slide. Okay. So what screeners, assessments

052and uh data points are used. So as I mentioned um some other screener and data points we have our students in the younger grades preK and K take the dial and the speed dial. The NWA again measures of academic progress three times a year. Fontis and panel benchmark reading running records three times a year and a curriculum based pre and post assessments um foundations math investigations diagnostics are some of the the programs that we use. So possible tiered supports in the classroom or out of the classroom. So as Dr. Kirkus described tier one um is in the classroom and small group instruction does occur in the classroom so that you know that'll happen everyone gets you know the program whatever program is being taught um lessons are differentiated at the tier 2 level um a

053teacher may pull a student just as an example what does tier 2 look like in the classroom maybe a student or a group of students aren't getting a certain skill so tier 2 in the classroom could look like a small group in the table in the back where this teacher is reteing a skill and the rest of the class is working on additional work. So that's what it could look like. It's explicit student instruction based on the students needs. Tier three, as we mentioned, um AIS interventions, ELA, Fontis, and Panel. So some of the uh supports that are used in tier three um are just words. So that's a program that we use. It's a phonics program. So our reading teachers will use those programs. Um foundations is a pro a phonics program. We for

054math we use learning. Um we the teachers the AIS teachers will students will take diagnostic assessments. We'll use that data to see if there's some gaps or some retach around certain you know whether it's math fluency or math skills that students need some work on. progress monitoring, what does it look like? So the IST meets to review data um and they again the team will look at work samples, curricular unit assessments to determine the need for tier 2 and tier three interventions, student work samples, NWA, um Fontus and PAL benchmark assessments. These all these data points are reviewed, they're analyzed, and they really try to find what are the students strengths, what are the students needs, and what are what are our next steps. So, what's the plan moving forward for the either the teacher

055in the classroom or in a pullout program with the AIS teacher? And all this information is used to get really a comprehensive picture of the students learning. So what is the timeline of IST meetings and what are follow-up meetings? So the IST team meets bi-weekly and um they meet as a team to review student progress. Um this also could be check-in with the teacher to ensure that there's fidelity to the students intervention plan. So for example um a teacher may bring um a referral to to the IST team. The IST team will look at the work and go over the teacher's concerns and they'll have a conversation. There may be a plan that has to go back to the classroom for the teacher to implement. Tier two and instructional support team will also support the

056teacher in terms of um giving them some guidance on what this intervention may look like in the classroom and how frequent. So when the ISTD team meets bi-weekly, they check in with the teacher. It might be an email um and just say how how are things going? How is that intervention plan working? Um and so that's that's the first check-in and that's in terms of monitoring the fidelity, monitoring the progress. Um then every 6 to 12 weeks there's a student review. So there's a specific goal. We want to make sure that let's say it's a phonics, maybe it's blends or diraphs or whatever the goal is for the student. So that intervention is being implemented in the classroom or e whether it's in the classroom or whether it's outside of the classroom with an interventionist

057and we're looking at the data. We're looking at um the tracking of that progress. So is the student now able to spell and write, you know, words, you know, CBC words? Are they able to do this now after 6 weeks of intervention? So they look at the rate of progress and based on the rate of progress they determine next steps. So what are tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 curriculum resources and what so what are the resources? So at tier 1 we have um foundations for a phonics program heard in grades K and one which is a phenemic awareness program. Again tier one is you know where we really want to strengthen to ensure that 90% of the students are make sure that we have researchbased programs. So this is what we currently use.

058Um we are using TC units of study in reading and writing which is something that we are at our literacy review team is in the process of selecting another literacy program. So we will be we are piloting that but for now we are still using TC units of reading and writing science 21 which is our Boseis program. Um in math we use investigations 3. Uh we also use DC Bose social studies ELA integrated units. Those are some of the curricular resources at tier 2. This is for students who again are not getting to tier one. The regular instruction in the classroom need a little extra. They need a little help. So that could look in the classroom. A teacher might do a double dose. So a teacher has a phon conducts a phonics lesson in

059the classroom and notices the student isn't getting it. So, we're still using Foundations. Foundations is our tier one for phonics, but what it looks like in a tier 2 is the same program, but we're retaching it. We're really honing in on what the student can do or what the what the students needs are. So, we're still using foundations. That's why it's under we call it a double dose, double dose of foundations, a retach, explicit small group instruction based on the students needs and analysis of student work and assessments. And tier three are EIS AIS interventions. Uh interventionists use LLI level literacy intervention program. They'll also use just words which is a Wilson um phonics program and additional foundation resources as needed. In math we use Learning Diagnostics. There's uh diagnostics exams that students take and

060these tools are leveled and the teacher conducts small groupoup instruction based on students abilities and needs. So what assessments and other information is used to determine eligibility? So again, you'll hear a lot of these things. Again, we we look at the big picture at we we use NWA scores, New York State ELA and math exam scores, classroom assessments, teacher observation, student work samples, delivery of tier 2 in the classroom, um instructional feedback is really important. So, is a student responding to instructional feedback? Um and it's we always talk about student strengths, right? So, what are the students strengths? um especially when we sit around the table to to talk about academics. What is an area that they really are strong in? Because sometimes that can we can use those strengths to help with the other

061needs. How is data analyzed? Schoolwide, grade level, and teacher level. So here's where I'll talk a little bit about our data teams. So um about a year and a half ago, we um started data teams, which um is like Dr. Kirkus mentioned myself um grade level teachers, kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, AIS teachers, reading teachers, is reading and math teachers, sorry. And um we looked unpacked data over several years and did a deep dive into question analysis to see in for our New York State ELA and math exams. We used N we uh used NWA, we used our ELA, not math, sorry, our ELA scores and NWA reading scores. um and we did a deep dive to figure out if there were patterns and trends and needs of um our students in grades three and

062four. So the data team looks at the school the whole school picture and um digs down deep. What we learned was that there was a need. Um we we found that many students uh were unable to correctly respond to constructed response questions on uh around main idea and detail. So with DC Bosey's training, we trained our team um on how to unpack and use protocols, how to use protocols to help unpack this data. And this was a process of our data team to first be trained. Um this year we turn keyed some of that information to the teachers and shared it. Um we created a schoolwide goal around main idea and detail research an instructional strategy one u researchbased instructional strategy called um boxes and bullets. It's an instructional strategy to help um teachers that

063teachers use to teach students about main idea and detail. So this assessment was given to all students from grades um K to 4. So that is that was our process and that's how we turn keyed it. And it's just an example of how we use a data team to help improve the tier one because right now what we did this year is we um gave that assessment twice already. So we're right now we're given the third assessment. So we gave the first one in um in the fall in October, the second one in January, and just recently the third. And our goal was to increase uh student responses by 2%. I think I I presented on this a few you might this might sound familiar to you because I did present it this twice before

064just to give you an update on where we were with this goal, but I'm tying it in here because it is so important to our tier one. It's important because it does you know MTSS is a continuous improvement and this is what we do. This is how we unpack data to look at continuous improvement on um as a school. So that's a schoolwide level. Um and you know we did see that from first to second um from the first assessment in the fall to the one in January students did make 2% growth in that area in the main idea. So it it does help inform instruction. It does help inform what's happening in the classroom. Um so during department meetings in terms of grade level data and uh teacher level data um during department meetings,

065building team meetings um and PLC's teachers review grade level data. They'll look at student artifacts and unit assessments. So when the teachers meet as a grade level, they align they talk about their the students where they are in certain units, where they are in instruction and so they have these conversations all the time. So that's what it looks like in terms of looking at the data at a grade level um for a grade level team. So what are our next steps for MTSS and Pauling Elementary School? Well, the data team will continue to look at schoolwide data for trends and patterns and collaborate with grade level teams and teachers to analyze student work and assessments. So, we're going to continue that work. Um, literacy curriculum review team will, like I mentioned before, um, they're are

066currently reviewing literacy programs to pilot for the selected uh, for the next school year. Um they currently are looking at three programs and we will be requesting demo presentations from these companies conducting virtual meetings with the schools that have already implemented them get insights and feedback and our goal is to pilot two programs next year. So for our ELA program and that's hopefully to for the following year replace TC units of study. Professional development will continue. So professional development of tier 1 and tier 2 strategies. We'll continue to implement those instructional strategies in the classroom. Support teachers with what does that look like in the classroom? How do I support my students? um and continue to refine our data collection and progress monitoring processes. So that's a continuous work and I just want to say

067this is a continuous improvement process. We're always looking at data. We're always looking to see what we can do better. So I'll take questions now. Oh, I'm sorry. I have one more slide. No, I won't. Parent involvement very important and it's really part of the entire process. Um parents continuously as we know have conversations with teachers. Um it's so important to have uh parent input and feedback around the table. I a lot of my presentation is focused a lot of on instruction but I know you heard about attendance teams and social emotional learning teams. Um it's you know communication and really knowing families and understanding families and understanding their needs is such an important process uh important information and part of the process. Um for example in our seal uh teams you know the school

068psychologist the school counselor have a lot of information and meetings with parents that we can really use to help support families. So um that routine communication from faculty to families is always there. Other ways that communication exists is through quarterly report cards through um interventions and next steps through our IST team. um they do communicate with families and with teachers about what's what will happen in AIS what what is the specific um you know what tiered interventions they will receive and that is through eligibility letters. So, usually when um a student is picked up for tier 2 and pulled out of the classroom for intervention, initial eligibility letter will be sent home to the parent. So, now I'll take questions. Thank you, Miss Rivas. Anybody? Hi, M. Revas. Thank you very much. Um, I just

069had a question about that. you were just talking about the the um SEAL team. So, how does what would that look like in a tier two if the child isn't in special education? Like does that are what kind of what do you what happens in a tier 2? So in our social emotional when we meet as an SEAL team uh which is an typically in a once in a six day cycle it would be um the school counselor the school psychologist myself or Miss Feliciano or sometimes both of us um and we you know information input and information from the teacher about perhaps a student struggling with behavior. Um, so how is that behavior planning, you know, so we we're we have discussions about how is that behavior plan working in the classroom for the

070student? Are they responding to the behavior? Um, are there other other things that are happening that may be a function of the behavior? So again, we don't like um as administrators, we have certain information, but that's why the team is so important because our school psychologist or the you know, we'll have more information about perhaps um you know the an FBA like a functional behavior analysis information or perhaps um this the school counselor might have had a conversation with a family and knows a really key piece of information And that now helps us to like, oh, now we get it. Now we explain where this is coming from. And then really we as a team discuss and say, "All right, what are our next steps? What are we going to do?" We have a log

071where we we we make sure we take good notes and track and follow. Um when we meet the next week in six or I'm sorry, the next time after once in a six day cycle, the next time we meet, we look at our notes. We say what well did we how is the child doing? Did we meet our next steps? What's next? So we it's a continual prog process. Sometimes out of those meetings we'll have um a referral perhaps for family services, a referral for aster. So there may be things that come out of that and you know with your example about behavior. Um I was going to work backwards on this slide that I currently have up. Um are parents are parents made aware of the the universal screener the NWA scores? Are those

072shared with parents? Well, actually, like I said, this is our first year, so I'm glad that you asked. I um we are this year we I just drafted a letter that's going to go to families and I'm working with Miss Gleason because it is NWA is um given to students in grades one through, you know, through 8, actually 10. So, we want to make sure that we're all consistent in the same. So, yes. So, the reports go home. Um there is on the back of the NWA reports there is a reference guide for parents. I imagine that in in terms of continuing this process um we do need some more education for parents around this in terms of understanding the scores but it's um there's a great visual. It's a bar graph. It shows um

073you know projected growth rates and you know there's a lot of information. I also um like as I was saying uh Miss Gleason and I drafted a letter together to go to parents really making sure that it's cons consistent and continual for the two buildings and um so that's you know I'm I'm proud to say that we're doing that this year and that we we are using it as a universal screener and that's something that I imagine we will need some training for parents and even for for teachers as well. Um so I have spoken to teachers about this. We did have an NWA training for teachers. I want to say it was in November. We had a consultant from NWA come and do. Actually, it was with the middle school as well. It was

074a team. It was both. So, but again, it's like a oneand done is not, you know, you're looking at this and there's a lot of questions that you have and you have to process and once you actually use the tool um have experience with it over time, you get more comfortable with it and that's with anything, right? So that's for teachers, that's for parents as they look at these and they see from year to year how they're doing. And again, this is just one data point. We're just talking about NWA, but it's not, you know, it's there's a big picture. So we don't just focus on one thing. But yeah, I had a quick question that maybe was better for Dr. Kirkers, but I was curious and I'm thinking also um being on the MTSS

075team in my own school district, how you share or maybe it's still a little bit too new, but how you share information as students move through buildings because we find that we get a ninth grader and then we start digging and digging more and then you realize, you know, there were a lot of MTSS strategies and tier one and tier 2 strategies already tried, you know, tried with this child, this is what worked, this is what didn't. Um but keeping track of all the data has been a challenge for us. So I'm curious what you do or what you see yourself doing to sort of share the data as children move through the years. Well, we have transition meetings um especially and actually just today we had transition meeting um you know we have several

076throughout the year um but today you know like we we share that information and not just around academic data but around um social emotional attendance data. Um so having that communication between buildings is key. Um is it perfect? No. I is there room for improvement? Always. I think um we're always looking to uh get feedback and see what what we can do better. But there absolutely we do have that communication and it is built into our system. Great. Thank you. Had a more general question here. So the referral to IST is um mainly on the on the teacher to refer the student in their class to IST. Is that correct? Mainly, but it's not the only way a parent could come up with a parent could um perhaps approach a teacher and have a concern

077and then that would start a conversation. Yeah. No, that that's kind of where I was going. So I was kind of asking um as a system as a whole to ensure that you know if you have Mr. Graic is the teacher perhaps I'm not recommending you for IST but Mr. Maine is recommending more students so it doesn't become teacher dependent like the system is built to where no student for lack of a better term falls through the cracks depending on the teacher they have. But I was more curious as to the system that exists in your school to ensure that like that doesn't happen that you know a parents know that they can request or can meet regarding this or that teachers are you know anything that you could speak to to that I'd be

078I'd be really uh curious to hear. Well, that's the whole purpose of universal screeners and ensuring that we're looking at data uh schoolwide data and then grade level data and then you know classroom data. So we really looking at all parts um to see if there are you know if there's a need right. So um you know like my example with the data team in terms of schoolwide data that was um something very you know the whole school really we felt there was a need that we needed to work on on that you know main idea in detail within a constructed response. Um I don't know if I answer is there the other piece of that if I may is in the document um there will be exit and entrance criteria that will be will

079be published. Now they won't be the whole story but they will be a touchstone um that will guide uh that will guide families and teachers so that you know they become effective floors and and ceilings and not that every single child that that's um absolute but it's a guide um because you you'd have to look at multiple multiple measures but that that I believe will be published as part of the document that the teams have been working on which And I think an important point part of ensuring systemic equity and being able to assure that all families will be um you know treated equitably across the system is and it's part of the intent of the work. Sure. Um just for clarification when you say entrance and exit you're referring specifically to as Go ahead

080Debbie. Well just for example um New York State assessment scores are a piece of this. There is certain um oh I'm thinking the words escaping me like um threshold cut scores thank you threshold cut scores that actually are a data point that is part of the eligibility process. So we look at assess like in in the middle school you look at assessment scores on the 5 through eight ELA and the state each year provides those cut scores and says this is a data point to use if they're below a certain level. In addition to that they leave it up to the schools to make local decision based on other data that they use. We you we might use NWA we might use um classroom assessment student work etc. But the New York State assessment scores

081are one piece of this. So the data team will essentially look at this like a cut score for example. They'll identify students underneath that threshold to use your word. they will they will then see perhaps like I guess my point is is the IST team also being proactive and it's not just relying on what lies on their desk but this team is also being proactive and there's a good system in place for not only parents to bring up but and teachers to bring up but this team of experts is actually doing a good job of identifying these kids. Exactly. Yes. That's what that's the point of the screeners. you you get the screeners then then you you basically have a grid of data and you you find those that level that like wow okay these

082this group of students in the red need additional support and then you can even dive deeper into what what are the skills what are the what are the standards if it's a New York state assessment um that you're analyzing if it's ana it might be a skill that it will help you drill down onto those skills no that's great because um because again I you know I know how a test is prefaced could give view the effort from a student on it, right? And then I I just wonder the success at which this is taking place and that, you know, we're ensuring that there is a good system and it sounds to that effect there is. But, you know, if I preface to an eighth grade student, hey guys, this doesn't matter. Just do it,

083you know, quickly so we can get on with our stuff. I don't really think I'm getting a good assessment of that student and I either may be missing something one way or the other. So, that's essentially what I was saying like does that safety net, that equitable safety net exist? And uh, you know, I think you answered that question and I think to Mrs. Rivas's point, you know, a parent should always be in communication with the teacher about their child's progress and vice versa. So, that's part of this process is that anyone can initiate an inquiry and then basically then that's where the discussion comes comes into play about the data that's been collected and the the actual gaps that the teacher seeing in the classroom. That helps a little bit. Can I just ask

084one question on that? How many data points are there? or is that dependent on the students needs or is that do you have a standard we're going to use at least four or can you speak on that? Well, the state requires us to have at least another one additional beyond the New York State assessment score. Um, we use a variet we we rely heavily on student work to be honest because that really shows what the student is doing. Um, for things like behavior etc. Like I said, it's it's refer it might be referral data and attendance data. It could be observational data if it's a specific thing that we're looking for, you know, um disengagement. Let's just say that, you know, um you know, what time of day is it? What teachers are seeing it?

085Is it in the morning? Is it, you know, there's a lot of lot of discussion that goes into why some of you know why we're seeing this particular like what data can we look at to see where the real issue occurs. One more. Sorry, one more. Thank you. Um, as far as the curriculum you use, are the curriculums you're using, are they easily to differentiate? What I mean by that, I know how difficult that can be, especially if you have kids at various levels in your classroom, say an elementary school teacher, are you happy with the curriculum we have? Is there some other curriculums we could use that would help teachers differentiate their material? because I know as classroom teachers, you're te especially an elementary school teacher, you have so many subjects to teach and

086it's can get overwhelming if you're trying to differentiate all those subjects without programs that are that help you do that. So, could you speak on that? Absolutely. Um teachers know their students best and I think one thing that we talk about are and try to focus as um students strengths and like their interests right so because we talked about differentiate is not just content instruction but it's also production and output so many times um even though we're learning about um you know polar bears Right. Um a student may need you know the the differentiation the curriculum is the same the standards are the same but what's happening for different groups of students may look different in terms of let's say the output the the outcome. So, um there may be a choice board. There may

087be a choice of how do you want to show your learning? Do you want to do a presentation? Um create um a and um I'm sorry, what's the word? U do you want to create a um a slide, not a present? I'm thinking of commercial. Thank you. A commercial. So, do you want to create a commercial? Do you want to do a uh project collaborative project with a a a group of students to to show you know whatever the standards were reading writing? Um so that's just one way that they can differentiate. Um you know so you're asking about the curriculum. So the curriculum can be differentiated. So that was just one example. I'm just specifically thinking of say math skills or English skills. So, if a if a student's in a fourth grade class

088and they're writing at a second grade level, but the curriculum's designed for a fourth grade level, or vice versa, if you have a student that's at a sixth grade level, do the programs help the teachers give that same lesson, but give it at a level that's going to challenge the student, but not be overwhelming to them or not be too easy to them based on where their level is. Well, this is where the tier 2 would happen in the classroom. So, you know, students should be explo exposed to the grade level curriculum and then in small groupoup instruction is where that retach or maybe having to go back a few lessons to make sure that the student has the foundational, for example, math skills that they need. Um, you know, they can't multiply if they

089don't really have concrete understanding of a strong number sense, right? So they'd have to go back and maybe use some manipulatives and to help that student really understand that number sense, but they're still being exposed to grade level curriculum. That's why the tier 2 is so important. One other question. Thank you. The uh I think you called it the double dose of found. What does that specifically look like in the classroom? So if that child, it sounds like that child's getting taught more than once that skill. So when would that happen and what specifically? So it's it could be um it's the same lesson but it could be taught differently. Perhaps there could be um some sensory um I'm just thinking for example um you know letter sound ID a student might not be able

090to understand that B is B and that there's you know the sound that comes with the letter and they couldn't identify it. Um so there may be some you know sand or sensory where they have to trace it, they have to write it. Um there may be some games that around it that to help reinforce that skill. So again um the students getting the curriculum but that's what it double dose would be a retach but it may look different. It's not going to be the same exact thing. and you didn't get it the first time in this manner, but you're going to get it again in a different way. That happen with the same teacher or could it happen with a pull out or It could happen with the same teacher or in a pull

091out. It Yeah. they're on. Yeah. So, in it should happen in the classroom. So, what we're really working on um as a district is to really strengthen our tier 2 in the classroom. Um, and that's a work that we're doing now. That's with our professional development. Um, that's a work that we're continuing. But it it could also be that the student is pulled with a small similar group from different grades uh from grade level groups uh with similar needs. Um so when we look at our data we may see that you know um 10% of our students in first grade have a certain need um and are falling below benchmark on certain assessments um when we look at our entire grade level data and this is where our AIS teachers are constantly looking at this

092data we have um and back to your question um Mr. ratic about where all this is housed. It's not all housed, you know, like it would be nice to have everything housed in one area, but we do have plenty of spreadsheets and and things that we're accessing. So, we have a spreadsheet for running records where we have all our running record data. We have um spreadsheets for um you know, and we have information on NWA. We have another uh we can go into EXL and get some diagnostic data. So there's different areas that we're pulling data, but our AIS teachers are also looking at data as grade level and they're saying, "Wow, we have this this set of students right here. There's a lot and they're coming from all different classes in first grade." So

093they will um this is when they meet this this is part of that uh bi-weekly progress monitoring. So we're really looking at the data and saying, "Well, we need to do something about this." So we're proactive. Welcome. Thank you very much. Hi, good evening. Um, so I am presenting on behalf of both the Pauling middle school and high school teams. Okay. And I'll try to make connections to what was formerly said and not spend too much time repeating um the the elements that are consistent across the elementary school, middle school, and high school because that is another part of the work was building alignment between the three buildings. Um so who is on the teams? There really are three teams that are central to MTSS at both the middle school and high school. These teams

094are the instructional support team, our attendance teams, and um at the middle school we call it our team. social emotional learning team at the high school. That team is called the student support team. Those teams function um uh for the same purpose. So these teams are comprised of teachers, administrators, counselors, school psychologists, district social workers, nurses, and other personnel as needed. Um so as formerly stated, these teams are fluid in the sense that they are um individualized for the students we are discussing. So we make sure that we have the proper expertise at the table um including teachers who know the students really well and also people who have expertise in the content area that um we're really trying to analyze. How do teachers initiate a referral to IST at the middle school and high

095school? Um so we have a quarterly reporting schedule. We also at the fiveweek mark of the quarterly reports we have um progress reports. So at these various reporting periods um of each quarter, data analysis occurs um meaning that we pull data from our student information systems to look at students who are below a 65% in coursework. Um and that's when teachers are asked to complete or they themselves will um pursue the completion of a form for students who are struggling to meet academic expectations um and or are exhibiting significant social emotional challenges in school. Similar to the elementary school uh we combine uh norm referenced diagnostic regents and standardized assessments. When we're looking at the more quantitative data, we want to try to get a very holistic picture of how our students are scoring relative

096to their grade level peers in Pauling, how they're scoring relative to students in the state, and also the NWA is a nationally norm referenced assessment. Um, and the regent exam is central at the high school level. Uh, we look at classroom assessment performance and observational data from the teachers. Um, I think one part that I don't know if we've really expressed enough is how how much the teachers observations of student learning matter at the table. um the quantitative data can kind of send you to keep looking for more quantitative data. But that expertise from the teacher who has sat with the student, who has listened to their thought process, who has really dug in almost as like a child's study and observation that data is really the most what we have found to be the

097most critical in identifying the proper interventions for moving forward. Um, and I know that that is also present at the elementary team because I've learned a lot in listening to the kinds of conversations that they're having around literacy development. Um, okay, where am I? Possible tiered supports inside and outside of the classroom. So, um, similar to what was formerly mentioned, um, we're really trying to get to refine our skill set on these high leverage tier one instructional practices. What do I mean by high leverage? These are the practices that research is showing um causes positive outcomes for student learning. Um these are things like modeling, scaffolding, visuals, um collaborative learning, um things that we we want to see um through the observational process. The Danielson framework really prioritize prioritizes these high leverage practices where student

098there's student ownership of learning um and really trying to build that robust toolkit for teachers that every day all of our students are receiving this this these high lever practices across content areas. Um small groupoup instruction is also a high lever tier one practice and it is a high lever tier 2 practice. um building based counseling. I included that because um actually at the middle level, Miss Kazaka, that is that would be a tier 2 um intervention that we might put in place, meaning the counselor may have a sequence of um a period of meeting with a child to really try to support them on social emotional needs that are presenting. Um and this this is not an IEP mandated service. This is not a service that's going to last for multiple years, but it's

099going to be a period of time where we provide an um additional um intervention by our counselor uh differentiated instruction as formerly mentioned and then also really thinking about our afterchool supports. Um our library is open every day for students. We have a a great peer tutoring program. Um, and while this is not part of um the pedagogical practices of the teachers, it's part of our system of trying to provide lots of entry points for students to access support in the ways that that will work for them. Um, and we also have a certified teacher who provides extra support after school to students. What does progress monitoring look like? So, as I said before, teachers are collecting data all the time about their students. They're noticing what practices are are yielding positive results on a

100daily basis. Um, and they're also looking um, you know, zooming out at more assessment data patterns, whether that's the um, the larger assessments like the New York State assessments or it's their own teacher made materials. Um, communication with colleagues and families. So teachers are often seeking the support of their colleagues in saying, "I'm noticing something. Are you noticing something similar?" And engaging in those more informal database progress monitoring conversations that um that supplement these more formal opportunities for us to dig in and look at data together. Also, progress monitoring really includes the conferencing with the student themselves and sharing back to that student and providing that student with feedback so that they can use that feedback to drive their their learning. And as students get older, they're they're far more um they're very interested and

101curious in that very in that targeted feedback for their own growth. And then we have um a robust uh process for analyzing data at these IST meetings. So what is the timeline for IST meetings and follow-up meetings? Um again thinking about our system um and almost thinking about the system as like a funnel. So on a routine basis, really about once a week, but it's uh once every six days cuz we're on a six-day letter day cycle, every grade level team in the building meets um and administrators join that meeting. It's usually both Miss Doulan and myself will join a fifth grade team meeting, a seventh grade team meeting. At these meetings, we um we make sure that we're really checking in on um you know, what's going on in the grade level, how what

102concerns are coming up, how are we monitoring progress, how are we talk sharing uh what's working and our challenges. From there, we have um data collection and monitoring every five weeks as I said before at the um progress report period and the um the marking period. And then we have IST and attendance processes approximately every 10 weeks. So it's at least once every 10 weeks we meet as an instructional support team. And that is as a result of the teacher um completing a a referral or a request for a team to convene and really look more closely at data, identify um our intervention, our targeted intervention, and then go off for a period of time. uh with fidelity implement that invent that intervention and track the students response to that intervention. So our curricular resources

103um at tier 1 2 and three I just provided pretty general uh buckets. So Pauling has a history a long-standing history of developing locally designed and standards aligned curriculum which is on atlas. A good portion of this curriculum comes out of the year the annual curriculum camp. Um and then also ensuring that we are supplementing or um making sure that that locally designed curriculum includes evidence-based programs and practices. and then moving into a tier three approach, speciallydesed instruction, which is really specific to special education, um, individualized education programs, um, that are very well articulated through the CSSE process. So, to bring this to life in a specific content area, um, I I'll choose math. Um, we have we do use specific programs. uh illustrative math, Desmos and E-Math instruction are three resources that um are

104used by six through eight teachers. Fifth grade, we are our math program is in alignment with the elementary level. Um but then in addition to that uh teachers are using the thinking classroom model which is um about high lever tier one practices putting student voice at the table uh monitoring student progress through uh making thinking visible and then um the speciallyesed instruction comes into play by the special education teacher as the co-teer who is taking that existing curriculum um meeting regularly with their general education co-teer and designing specifically designed specially designed instruction for their students. The assessments and other information that are used for our next steps. Again, we look at NWA, our ELA and math assessments, um the regent exam at the high school level. uh consistent with the elementary school, we look at

105the EXL program diagnostics which provide diagnostics on discrete skills and then also on grade level standards, classroom assessments and observational data. How is data analyzed? We we look at data all the time. uh we're looking at data at faculty meetings, we look at data at department meetings, um at team meetings, departmental and individual analysis and the IST process. And we try to make sure that we're looking at diverse sets of data. So in addition to what I just talked about, which really um captures the academic data set, we've spent a lot of time as a faculty looking at participation rates data. We look at attendance data. We look at um discipline referrals. We look at um data that's coming out of um student reflections during detention. Um we look at referrals um categorically and what

106are we seeing um a disproportionate fre are we seeing frequency of certain types of infractions? Why? And asking those questions as a team trying to improve outcomes for children in all ways. Um, so what does progress monitoring look like and how does it guide follow-up meetings of IST and next steps? So my answer to this is really specific to that IST process. We are we have a lot of data in front of us and again we have that teacher representation of the data that's so important to really listen in um and understand what's happening. So we have this close analysis of student performance by the faculty and then we really try to identify a targeted intervention to try out in classrooms across classrooms for students and and monitor um how well that's causing a positive

107result for children. hear me? Yes. Okay. Um, so similar to the elementary school, parents and guardians are an integral part of this and and really care about this, right? They they want to know what can I count on if my child is is struggling in school. Can I count on routine communication from faculty members? If my child is um demonstrating some behavioral challenges, can I count on that type of communication? And I can say with the utmost confidence that the parents can count on routine communication from faculty um with families and we welcome communication from families to us so that we can really um understand if something is showing is appearing at home and and support that child with the homeschool connection. Um our parent portal um is a great you know resource routine resource

108to look at for updated grades across content areas, updated attendance and um the report cards and marking periods are also um memorialized through the school tool parent portal and we do send letters to families regarding attendance. our IST meetings and processes. Um, and we often have parents at the table for instructional support team meetings. Um, because often these interventions, if really tried out at both home and school, sometimes they are really relevant at both home and school or if the child can receive those consistent messages from both home and school, we're far more likely to see a positive result for kids. Um and parents really are able to share a lot of great information at the table also about any recent challenges that child might be experiencing um outside of school or what that child

109is reporting at home that they might not feel comfortable sharing with us. And then in addition to that when a child is eligible for an AIS service um all families are notified via um an eligibility notification. So that might um at the high school level that appears in a child's schedule. At the middle level we do mail a letter to families making them aware. I wanted to also just highlight some of the work. Um this slide is specific to middle school and then I will also um share some of the work that both Mrs. Ken and Mr. Titus shared with me as a representation of the high school work. But we did do um the the middle school faculty dug in really deeply to MTSS throughout the year. We spent a lot of time at

110faculty meetings and department meetings focusing in on this and trying to identify a specific school goal that um that was relevant to our classrooms because as you've probably really um or already knew, MTSS is a huge topic. It's very technical and um it's hard to know, you know, the building is in very different places. So um some teachers might have strengths in certain areas and other teachers have strengths in others. So we were trying to really gather um some data by conducting a needs assessment at the beginning of the year of what are our strengths, what are our challenges and then from the challenges developed this school goal which was about um to build so intentional differentiation of instruction and support based on progress monitoring and data collection. So, how can we um build that

111muscle memory across teachers and subject areas and grade levels of what's the data I'm taking in? How does that relate to the data I've taken over time? And how can I then differentiate in real time or tomorrow or use a program that will tailor instruction to student needs. Um, and we learned a lot from this needs assessment. And um I think the teachers they they spent time in departments completing the needs assessment. So that was also good because they saw what was happening with their subject area across different grades. Um from there we the teachers did a differentiation selfassessment uh using a tool I don't have the resource here but it was it was a great tool for teachers to kind of get a pulse. Differentiation is a really big term. It's a term we've

112used for many years. Um, and so I think getting specific for themselves about what do I want, what principle do I want to try to work on this year? And the sub bullets there are the two principles that we voted on as a faculty that we wanted to focus on. And um, the first one is about continuously assessing student learning. Um, and the second one is about flexible student grouping in our classrooms. And then as a next step really um zooming in on authentic assessment as an important component of student success. So again looking at tier one tier one practices our curriculum specifically our assessment um as a tool for uh really ensuring that students are engaged in relevant personalized real world projectbased skills that's covering so many different skills and competencies. um we want

113to zoom in there moving forward and the high school shared that they are very interested in collegial observations among departments. Uh so building um more opportunities for teachers to um see each other um implementing practices that are from the toolkit of tier 2 practices. and um building that collegial professional learning within the school day as a way to really um uh improve student outcomes and spread success across the entire building. and then continued implementation of these tier one and tier 2 practices and our ongoing professional development um where teachers can turnkey learning that they from um whether they've attended something at DC Boseies or or um something within their content area to each other. Okay. And I will take questions. [Music] I just had one real quick. When you say um for parents and guardians,

114routine communication, what do you mean by can you just elaborate on routine? Like how much would that entail? Um teachers are communicating. I'm often CCD on emails. I'm, you know, made aware of emails. So emails, phone calls, um things that they noticed that were drastic improvements, concerns, challenges, that would be the routine communication that um would be happening between families and teachers. So it wouldn't be like weekly or daily, monthly, just depends would depend on the student, I would assume. Depends on the student. And I also know that many teachers send more general emails. So they'll do newsletters or and often there's maybe one teacher per grade level who will share a fifth grade newsletter or a sixth grade newsletter on behalf of the team. Um so they work um as a team to also

115make sure that there's routine communication to everyone almost like an MTSS right so tier one was everyone receiving how do we make sure that students who need that extra communication we have families in for team meetings um we might have a smaller meeting in my office but we want to keep the communication open no surprises along the lines of Mr. Chuchi. So if a student is referred and to to the to tier 2, say, is that when the the a family is immediately notified like right at that maybe not at that second, I mean, but like they're going to come in at that that same if they're being um like if they're receiving a service that's outside of their routine schedule, parents will be immediately notified. But teachers might be trying a tier 2 practice

116in their classroom based on a recent assessment and that's not going to be notified to the the family because it's not that a student is now in tier 2 services and that's where that student falls. You know, the the tiers are not places for students. They're more um moments in time or responses to needs. It's um it's fluid and it's based on on what data is being what we're looking at if that makes sense. I have like a two-part I don't know who's the most appropriate to answer it but um just thinking about something I'll get to the end I promise. Uh when we talk about a universal screener um I know we're talking about you know NWA New York State ELA math sements regions I like all these things that are compiling to build

117this profile. Is a universal screener a singularity that is uh required or is the universal screener can actually be a plural thing? Like I'm just trying to understand by that definition of how it's written in the RTI and MTSS uh you know state documentation. Is that a a singularity or is that could that be multiple uh things? Cuz I know we identified the universal screener as the NWA at the elementary school. I guess my question is is there a thoroughess from the elementary to the middle school where there is this contin continuity of the NWA from you know the first time it's administered through your school to the high school that maybe provides a little more consistency or a little better of a litmus test that's you know lacking variance as one school to another.

118It's the same program continuing throughout. I guess that's my full question there. It is the same assessment. We've administered the NWA in grades 5 through 8 since prior to me starting here. So um for at least 7 years that assessment in both reading and math um we have longitudinal data for students um who are in high school right now of um their data from uh I believe it was in prior to this year it was started at grade four at the elementary school. Um but it was 5 through eight at the middle school and it goes through grade 10 at the high school. And um there are so many different reports you can pull from the NWA there. Um the assessment itself is adaptive. So it will get harder the more that students um or

119more difficult the more that students get answers correct and it will get easier as students are getting answers wrong. So it develops a really strong profile of student skills of things that they're demonstrating mastery with things that where they are, you know, kind of getting one right, one wrong, and then what the extension activities would be. So teachers can pull, and this was actually part of the training that our teachers had in November. There's so many different data sets you can pull from NWA. And one of the things that I like to look at um from from the administrative level or just more the balcony view is there's a data set that will show a line graph of performance in fall and spring since the the first time they took it. So you see if

120slope is really high and you see the dips and you can see find patterns there too. Um, so yeah, administering the same screener across multiple years benefits the district tremendously. Yeah, thank you. I love the word you use on longitudinal like that longitudinal data I just think is uh is great and uh um no thank you for that. That's uh helping me understand so I appreciate it. I just want to compliment you. um the ND NWAS are discussed at my kitchen table and last night I was actually showed a graph from September till now that my students were printing out for their learning celebration. So I do think um there is discussion in the classrooms about its value and I think that's really important because like you alluded to if the teachers don't show that

121it has value to the student it's just like oh here's another thing we're doing but I think that they do recognize what it is. They know that they're looking for growth. They were telling me exactly how many points. Um, but I know it's an assessment. I I believe in the elementary school, right? It's the second graders even. Yeah. So, so my second grader talked about it, my sixth graders talked about it. So, I think, you know, the more that the children are hearing about it that it has some value and they're not viewing it, I think, as um, you know, a passing or a failing or something, but they were looking very much for growth, that was really important to them to see that the line, like you talked about, was going up. So, just

122want to bring that up. Can I just piggy back on that? Is that is that something you do consistently with the students as well? Do they get to see their their growth as they teachers share I can speak for the middle level. The teachers share the um the growth that the student has had from fall to spring and I actually witnessed um some conversations that teachers were having with students as they shared this result with them and celebrated progress. And I think we're going to see a lot of students having this this data on their learning celebration display because um they really see the value in it and um and they knew what it was about. It wasn't they weren't looking at if they were in the red zone, the green zone, or the blue

123zone. They were really looking at I was here and now I'm here. And you know, keep doing that and it's going to it's going to all be okay. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all. Uh clearly clearly important um as evidenced by all of the interests from around the table. Um and a good job to all. It's been a year-long process, but this concerted alignment of all of the resources to globalize tier one, then target focus, you know, tier two and ramp up for level three um on, you know, databased uh progress um is is impressive. I think that we are, you know, we're at um, you know, we're really setting up our students um, you know, for success moving forward and really aligning the resources that we have to support everyone accordingly.

124So, want to thank everybody for all their questions and their interest. Zach, Mr. Gra, would you like something? Yeah, one more thing. I know um, thank you guys for so much just helping understand it. I think a lot of work is going to be done over the next couple years with this board goals and a lot of other things looking at data. It's just really good to know what's going on and happening. Uh I just wanted to add uh one more question then just one more thing. I don't know if you know it's too early to talk about policy, but I looked up the you know there's the one policy 4321.02 which is a reference to schoolwide pre-referral approaches and interventions. The last time we adapted it was 2010. I obviously think that with this

125work going on, this is something that maybe um you know sooner than later we could just start talking about as far as uh the work that we just heard tonight and obviously updating that. um you know it just seems appropriate and now the time to do so. And I guess I had one more question um is in terms of in terms of staff um do we feel and whoever wishes to answer like do we feel obviously there's a lot to do in in this work um do we feel that we're amply staffed uh you know we have enough staff to get this work done to the level that um it needs to get done especially what Dr. Walsh referred to beforeh before with transitions from like one school to the next. Meaning uh if the

126staffing at the elementary school you have a large grade in you know a large fourth grade and um you know fifth grade is perhaps smaller grade the staffing is situated and then the next year that large fourth grade is going into that small. So I guess my question is is there a plan to just make sure that this is all adequate staff and are we at that point right now? Well, the staffing conversations rise up out of the organization in the context of the overall budget planning because staffing is always a budget conversation. So those topics about whether whether we have adequate staff to do the work that we're seeking to do are the conversations that are really November, January, and February. Um I am going to bring a need uh that we are considering

127to the board under new business that does um does relate to staffing but that is a routine part of our budget conversations. So our goal is that when we present a budget to you in uh March that it's taken into account what we're hearing from the staff, what we're observing in the students across the data. And I I think um that you know that's that's the process by which we're doing it. Um but I do have a blip so I'm going to raise a blip with you. Yeah. Great. No, I just asked because I know we we waited for this all the way till June and we kind of bypassed that budget season. So one thing I was curious about during that time is um did any of this work being done cause people to

128analyze and say, "Oh, wait. We need this come budget time." And um I guess that's essentially what I That would be a better question for um for uh Dr. Kirkus and the principles who were, you know, at at the table. Uh, but their insights informed the budget at that time. So, thank you for that. The last thing that I wanted to just close on was you did mention all of you talked about parent involvement. And so that's a critical piece um you know for me to understand a little bit further down the line how it is that we're going to educate parents as to what it is that is being presented to them about their children. How to be able to constructively have conversations with the teachers, you know, and the faculty about their concerns,

129right? and and just to understand the plethora of data that is going to come their way as a result of implementing MTSS. So, thank you all again. And now moving along, it's only uh 9:06. We got a couple of hours. Um administrative reports, I'd like to welcome up Mr. Baluchcci. Done by midnight. Okay. Um, Mr. Kenyonus is uh kind enough to put up a just some pictures while I'm going to hand out some folders with uh information you can get online, but to gather it is easy for me and probably hard to find. So, uh, let me do that while you're and then I'll come back. Any of those pictures? Um, nope. Right here. Yeah. So, you can just scroll through them. They're I'm not going to speak to them too much other than if

130you do look uh just one or two points I want to make. You know, a lot of this was from the last event of the year was a uh section u I'm sorry, state qualifier at Arlington after our class C championship here. And um yeah, just you know, all polling kids here. Yeah. Keep going. Look at it. Last event of the year we had um Emmy Massia qualified for the states. So that was exciting. She won the section class C triple jump 33 feet 4 and 1/2 in personal record. And so quite a few of the kids in the pictures here were also uh three sport athletes and 90 and above. So they were awarded some honors tonight. And I'll show you a couple. Uh keep going. Yep. There's Emmy. I I don't know if

131this was the winning jump, but that's somewhere in the middle of the jump. That's uh before the landing, of course. And then there she is. 33 4 and a half inches about a foot foot and a few inches. There's her medal. And pretty smart kid there, Amy. And there's one of their I think a relay team. One of the future uh champion relay teams. Here's a picture of our pentathlete who had to hurry because after finishing his events um I think it was uh on a different meet. keep going. Uh there he is. He finished pretty I think he has the most points there and then he had to get back. That doesn't happen in big schools. So it's a it's a point point to think about. We have not a lot of people, right?

132And uh I'm going to make that point. I want to get get into the data here. And the pro side of that is we have a kid on a varsity team who's also, you know, in a concert. sometimes they're lead in the play. Um, you know, when I went to a big school years ago, you couldn't be in the play and on a varsity team because both groups practiced two or three or four hours, you know, on any given day and you just couldn't do that. So, you know, the pros and the cons, one of the cons is we went to the sectional championship in um the tournament, not the championship finals in girls lacrosse this year and we only had 10 girls left to play in a game. We competed very well. We lost

133by, I think, five goals. I think it was 15 to 10 or 15 to nine with 10 girls on the field the whole time. Um, had we not had a few injuries or a couple other conflicts, we might have won that game. But that's part of the story of, you know, uh, being in a small school and not having 200 kids in a grade. We have what we have and it's a great thing. It's a pro a pro. Um, but what I guess I'm bringing attention to and I'll speak to it in the packet is the awareness of that I think is um something I take for granted. I've been here a long time. I've lived in Pauling for almost 40 years. My kids have all gone through here. So I forget that people don't

134know what I take for granted. And so part of what I I I do it in the beginning of the year, but I think it's good at the end because I'm going to suggest something to think about. It's not a suggestion that I've uh I I would even give you my my uh vote on if it was a vote, but we are the more northernmost school in section one in the far corner and we have been part of section 9 years ago, which would mean we were the we would be the southernmost eastern school in section 9. So there's no um so this is what we should do. I'm not going to say that tonight. I think it's important, especially if you have young kids in the district, uh, whether you're here in, you know,

135listening, to consider the pros and cons of going to section 9. And the reason I bring it up is so you consider it. We don't have to do it. We can stay where we are, and, you know, that's fine, too. We could go to section 9. Um, and there would be pros and cons to do that, and I'll speak to some of those tonight, but it's there's a lot to it. If it was a no-brainer, then, you know, what the heck are we doing in section one? And if it wasn't a consideration, then I wouldn't bring it up at all. But I think it, you know, even years ago, I thought it would have been a better uh fit for us in some ways, but not in all ways. Uh we've uh we've um talked

136to section 9 many times over the last 20 years and you know as as uh an athletic director and and an interest in going there. Many of our coaches would prefer to go there years ago when it was brought up. Um Arlington approached their board, the Arlington AD years ago approached their board and I think it was a 44 tie and so they just stayed where they were. but other schools did go to section 9 overwent. Um, so it isn't obvious. It isn't easy and I don't have an answer as maybe somebody who you know has been around a long time with kids in the district could give you clearly this is what you should do, but I think you should discuss it and uh the deadline every year is November or the next year.

137So if you ever do it, you just should know, you know, that's a piece of it, too. Um so with that said, let me dig into this packet. Uh first, you just have a copy of the uh of the um board report, but I'm not going to read from that. That's just something you can uh if you have a copy already electronically. Uh maybe I wasted paper and you can throw it throw it out, but that's not what I'm going to speak to. The first page is just kind of fun. It has a little Oh, excuse me. a list of the fall, winter, and spring scholar athletes. So that includes kids who maybe didn't play three sports but get the pins each season. So just for the board's reference, you you can see there are

138quite a few other really good student athletes that maybe just don't do it three seasons in a row. The second one is a sneak uh please don't share the um next page where it says spring sports section awards and scholar athlete awards um the scholar athlete awards of course you saw you know some of those tonight but the um spring sports section awards that I'm handing you because some of the coaches like to surprise their athletes they don't even know it and some are not even complete yet cuz we are still in the process of uh I think track and field maybe is still going through the uh the uh coaches meetings to find out who qualified for the section awards. So all section, all league and honorable mention status. Uh the next page looks

139like this. And so now I'm going to kind of turn the topic a little bit. This page I just grabbed offline and still to this day it is wrong. It's New York State Public High School Athletic Association's map of section 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. It actually shows section one going all the way up to the top of Duchess. That is uh I I want to say almost never been true. Um it it certainly isn't now. It's cut off at Pauling. So it barely approaches you know portion of Duchess County. But for, you know, the sake of this is what the the one you would find online if you looked for it in the New York State website. It also doesn't um in that lighter shading, it's colored on,

140you know, on on the website. It doesn't have Rockland County. So, this is not only inaccurate. I don't think for the last 50 years that I can remember because I I remember as a little kid going up to Kingston and Mount Vernon had to travel to Kingston to spend the night for a sectional wrestling tournament when I was a little kid over 50 years ago watching and so it did go all the way up to Kingston and it has changed. Schools do go in and out of different sections but not often. So it's changed a few times in the last 40 or 50 years that I know of. Um I think it was about 30 to 35 years ago. I want to say 30 that Pauling was in section 9 and then the move to

141section 1. There were some I think political fights, maybe a lawsuit and and it involved some, you know, angry ads and coaches, but that's water under the bridge. So here we are in section one and we're doing fine. You know, it's it's it's not a bad thing. But here's why I bring it up. It's good to know what we as ads have to you know try to work through geography and strength of competition. Uh those are the two you know conflicting issues we have. I would much rather play if you look at the bottom of section one on this sheet. Now this is the um what do you call it when it's you know highlighted then not whatever that is. I forget the word. I'm a math teacher. Got a uh this this one section

142one has the enrollment. If you go to the second page down towards the bottom, you'll see Pauling has number of 260. That's the formula that shows our enrollment. It's a very specific formula. It's basically three grades worth of pulling students 9 10 11. It changed that's what it actually was for many years. They changed it slightly and it's basically the same idea. So if you divide that by three, you know, we have a little under 90 kids per grade on average according to the data here taken on I'll just say October 4th across New York State. So every kid that's enrolled in New York State on that day is accounted for somewhere and that's what is used for the next year and sometimes the next two or three. So those rules don't change much. They

143changed slightly, but that's basically so we know who should we play, who should we compete against in a league. So, how do we get to a league? I um for just your sake, uh this is a kind of a repeat of information. I think one might be, you know, a year off, 24 25 versus 25 26, but I uh put together section 9 and section one just for your convenience if you ever want to compare section one schools with section 9 schools. Okay, I kind of know them uh off the top of my head for the sake of who would we play if we went to section 9 and I'll discuss that as we go forward. So that's this page. Um basically redundant information, but it in it's not really because it adds uh section

1449 to the second page. Um then what I wanted to show you is New York State's classification numbers. What does that mean? So if you go to this page, a packet I should say, they're all either pages or packets. at the top it has the New York State symbol with map of the schools. It's not as obvious as you would think, but you know once you dig into it. Um so for boys soccer, if you have 260 kids in your beds number on the previous page, then we would be a class B school in that sport. Okay? If you go to girls soccer, we'd still be a class B school. forot to put on my glasses so I don't say things in error here. Um but then if you go to let's say flip the

145page over and look down towards maybe um girls uh girls volleyball on the top of the second full page and you'll see 260 would be a class C sport. So I'm sorry for girls volleyball at the uh the volleyball at the second volleyball. Sorry I mumbled get accused of that once in a while. So if if um yeah if somebody asked me what class are we it depends it and we are in a bubble and I think it's more common with the small schools to be there. So without digging too deep into that I know it's you know kind of self-evident when you start looking at it. This sheet to me is very valuable. As small as the print is, it's this is a good one cuz you know when you get this online, again,

146trying to save color ink, I guess cheapkate that I am. If you go down to the bottom of the first page, you'll see Pauling is a class B sport. And not only class B sport in boys soccer and girls soccer, right under the Pauling is a class C team. So, we are the smallest school in class B when we compete in the sectionals in that class. We don't compete against class C teams in the sectionals. We can compete during the regular season because those are good games for us. They're not that much different. We can compete against class A, you know, double AAA if we really think it's a good matchup. But um we are in a bad spot there because we're the smallest small school. But if you go across to let's say cross

147country for next year there we're a class D school and we're the biggest class D school in cross country. Now here's the problem. We're in a league with schools way at the top. So we're not going to I shouldn't say we're not going to. It's going to be difficult for us to compete with Arlington, John J, Fishkill, Ketchum and Pikipsy in cross country in our league. I got voted down on that one. I'm only one one vote. And I don't curse. I didn't curse, but I was on the edge of saying, "Are you kidding me?" And then adding a few words. But we are we are in a very difficult league and there's no changing it cuz we vote. There's 24 people in the room and then there's 60 people in the room and I'm

148you know trying to cause a little stir. So next year we were in a bad league. But the good news is when we compete in the sectional championship then we're in class D. So it comes out at the end of the year that okay I can fight all I want sometimes lose those battles as a small school. We're in a league with bigger schools but at the end of the day when we compete we go back to the class that we're supposed to be in. if that makes sense. Because sometimes I get, you know, understandably I rate parents, why are we competing in this league and I say I I don't have a good answer for you. I got voted out and a lot of times it's because of geography. Nobody wants to come to

149Pauling, they tell me, until we have an invitational and then they're all paying to come here to be in an invitational. So with that said, it does come out in the wash at the end of the year. So it's not all at gloom and doom. Uh but I think this sheet will help you understand each sport where we, you know, where we compete at the varsity level. At the modified level, it's a whole another ball game and I'll talk to that about that as well. I won't spend quite as much time on it, but that's that's another dilemma. The last one is um the the last sheet I or page I want to talk about is the one that has on one side mixed classification with geographic uh clusters. We tried this about 15 to

150almost 20 years ago, but at least uh for a few years. We we changed the conferences and then yet we create leagues across the conference and different athletic directors are responsible for different sports. They put together these leagues. Sometimes I agree with them, sometimes I don't. as every athletic director has to deal with whether you're a big school and let's say Arlington years ago no one would play them in soccer they couldn't fill a schedule they would have to travel all over the place because they were very very good for many years in a row state champions for quite a few years back back in the early uh 20s and so I understand their dilemma they can't find opponents because I'm not adding them to our schedule and some of the double and AAA schools

151excuse uh they wouldn't even add them to their schedule. So, they have their issues. On my end, the teams I I might prefer to play because of the strength of competition might be uh Bronxville, Dos Ferry, Tuo, Ry, Blindbrook, schools our size or closer to our size, but a lot of times they don't want to travel up here. Sometimes they don't own their own buses. Each trip up here might cost them $600, $800 a trip. And so they have their issues that they have plenty of opponents down in lower Westchester. There's a lot of schools in a small area. So they can fill their schedule and it's a battle to get them to come up here. That's one of the reasons I would say we travel no matter what. I mean, we'll go to North

152Salem. Great. We play them in almost everything because they're our size and they're close. We'll play Halane. They're a little further, but they're our size. Good good opponents in most sports. Uh Putinham Valley a little bigger. They've grown. They used to be a very good opponent. As they get bigger and we've gotten smaller, it's been a little tougher in some sports to compete with them. And then it kind of gets more difficult geography wise. We could save $4 $4 a trip in gas by going to Arlington. I'm making that up, but not much of a savings. You're on a bus, you're going somewhere, and you're coming back. To me, I I would much rather have a good contest, and I would rather go to Ryneck or Blindbrook and play a good game than to play

153Caramel or Mayac or even Brewster sometimes. However, we do that sometimes, depending on the sport, we can compete with those schools that are close to us in certain sports. And so we, you know, sometimes we'll have a little bit of a mismatch, but maybe it's the game we get and sometimes it'll be a balance with some of the other games with the small schools. And then I reach out a lot to uh do their section 9. You will not see them in our schedule. We have to call and arrange that as a as an extra game. So usually you're given 14 games by the section that you have to honor. Typically eight to 10 are league games and the other four to six are what we call crossovers and you can only drop one if

154both schools ads mutually agree to drop it. So when you're handed a crossover game you have to play it basically. Um and that usually leaves anywhere from about two to four to six games to play depending on the sport. Basketball you the state allows you to play 20 regular season games. soccer and field hockey and uh lacrosse you can only play 16. So each sport has a limit of how many you can play and you can pick up these games with do great opponent about our size. Uh, usually with the sports they have, we're pretty comparable, but they don't have field hockey, they don't have ice hockey, they don't have wrestling, so we can't just play them and everything. And that's one of the things you consider if you do go to section 9. Weebuck,

155great opponent for us. Uh, there's hardly ever traffic going up there unless you know, just unlucky. Um, Milbrook, a great opponent for us in most sports. Pine Plains, but they also get a schedule from their section and it's not always an automatic that they'll play us. But th that would be a great league. That was what they used to call the By Valley League for many many years, decades and decades prior to me getting here, but I know about it. Um I I I can speak to that a little bit, but that's basically it. It would be Pauling. Uh we tucked over Pine Plains, Milbrook, probably Ryan Beck, and then the bad news, we would have to play schools across the river like Ellenville, maybe Eldrid. If you haven't heard of those, it's because they're

156far. So, it's not all a no-brainer. There's a lot of things to consider. And yet, we don't have to go over there too often. If you we go over there once and they come over here once, well, too bad on them. and too bad on us when we go there. So, there are pros and cons with going to section 9 because it does go pretty far west and some of the schools that would be good opponents for us are pretty far away. So, our little league might be really nice, but then we would have to like going to Bronxville or Yoner's Montasauri Academy in the middle of a week and playing down in Yoners, we'd have we'd maybe be across the river an hour. So, there's there's a trade-off there. And maybe it's an even

157Steven depending on who you are and how you look at that. A lot a lot of parents have an easier time going to Bronxville or Dos Ferry or Blind Brookke compared to maybe the few times we'd have to go across the river an hour, but we would have to do that. So with that said, um you know, it's something to consider, talk about. My coaches have asked me for about a year now. Um it used to be the opposite. I would ask them, I had a few strong coaches back in, you know, 200 7 8 9 10 11 when these things were coming up and they did not want to move because they thought it would hurt their programs. those same programs and some of the same coaches have asked me I I would be

158willing to go meaning I don't want to fight you know I don't want to have a civil war with coach it has to be almost unanimous otherwise I'm just handing you a you know a dilemma and so I'll keep asking them if it is unanimous then we have to really talk about it more and it and it's not a you know an easy decision there will be some negatives that we don't have staying in section one, but there's quite a few really nice positives, too. And you just have to balance those out and figure out what would be the right thing to do if we consider it. So, again, if we do nothing at all, there's there's nothing broken. If we go AC over um I think it would be very good, but there would

159also be some things that would be new to the polling parent and athlete that would would probably cause a comment. uh once in a while like why did we do this? So the 80% pro, 20% con of going over or the 80% pro of staying and 20% con of go, you know, of staying. There's it's an 8020 either way. And the 20 is what I I try to filter out in my own head. But again, it's not, you know, it's not just my opinion. I'm trying to give you the details, maybe generate some questions, and then think about it and uh, you know, go from there. If if I had it my way, the team sports would move over. The individual sports would probably stay here, but you can't do that. We were lucky that

160section 9 allowed us to come over and eightman football because they needed us as much as we needed them. And so that was an, you know, kind of an anomaly. But, um, it's usually either all or nothing. That that's a unique situation in New York State. There's not that many eight-man football leagues. So that's that's a piece of the puzzle. It works well for us, but football you play one day a week on a Friday or Saturday. And if we travel to Eldrid or Sullivan West, I would not want to do that on a Monday night, you know, or on I wouldn't do that. So lot lot to think about and uh I'll be quiet. That's kind of what I wanted to talk about to at least give you some food for thought. Thank questions.

161If u if Pauling were to switch from section one to section I is there like a time commitment like you if you make that change you commit to 3 years or something like that or is it something that it doesn't work out and you can immediately revert back to the previous section like is there any sort of caveat like that? um that there there isn't, but I know if we break up with section one, there might be some unwritten annoyance with that and if we ever wanted to go back, you know, that shouldn't be the case. We could just apply. I think they would want us back. You know, we're a good opponent for many of the schools up our way. So, um it's a year-by-year thing, but it isn't it doesn't solely rest with

162us. If we want to move, they still have to vote on it and accept it. and they may say no because it will disrupt what they do. We're one more small school vote and I know um the the question is I don't know if it still is the same would we tip some of the control between across the river and this side of the river and so the the I think the majority of the teams are across the river number-wise and so if they see us coming up and we add one more school because a few schools have gone to section 9 I don't know where the tipping point is. So again, that's beyond our our um control, but it's something that, you know, I don't want to just paint the picture that we want

163to go, they take us. It's it's probably that simple because I've talked to uh you know, I called the executive director up there a few times over the years and more recently this year, just to say, how would you know, how do you think it would be received if I at least tell tell the board what they should be thinking about? uh to do a little, you know, I guess pre pre-planning. So, hope that answered your question maybe a little more than you asked. Okay. Any other questions? No. Thank you, Mr. Billy. Right. And next year, could I ask for no rain, please? That was not fun. Not a fun spring. Right. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Agenda order. We have no um addendum. However, I do have an item that I

164would like to move under amend appointments. Number four, amend the reg uh the reorganizational meeting. Like to move that to under board of education. Okay. So, resolve to move. Oh, you you're you're doing the um agenda order. So, oh, we we do that when we get to consent. No, it's done. Oh, it's already done. I've done it here. You've done it. Okay, got it. So, you guys just need to approve it. Okay. Resolve to approve the following additions, deletions, changes, and order of the agenda as presented. Do I have a motion? Mr. Duchi, do I have a second? Second, Mr. Maine. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Okay. On to visitor comments. Let's see. Thank you. Let me just read our visitor comments policy. We value your input. Um, and that's why we welcome public comments.

165Um, so here's a quick recap. Um, please introduce yourself by stating your name and address and let us know if you represent an organization. Remember, there is a time limit if um, each speaker has 3 minutes. An unused time cannot be given to others. We respectfully ask that you direct your comments to the board president. Please remember, we're here to listen. We may not respond tonight, but if necessary, we will follow up later. Um, tonight we have Mr. Mikovsky to speak about superintendent appointment. Um I I have kind of mixed feelings of um missing parts of the Mets game and staying here by coming here this long. But um this this old man you just got an old history lesson. I remember the time when the board was sitting here and had the community in

166uproar because John was suggesting that we can't compete in 12man football anymore and boy you had these big guys that that that that I don't I don't know when when they were talking about the time when when they were young and ver but we couldn't compete and the board made the decision on John's um recommendations that we join in a league that that was starting in eightman football and the bottom line is we are right at the top if not the top team in eight man football and um that so just to give you an example we we we um I also um um had the pleasure of sitting here and getting an example of the wonderful skilled staff that Dr. Fontana had um um had a had a hand in in hiring and in

167in order to understand um um how we got here, we got to understand um where we were and um the renaissance um in education that has occurred over the past oh um over a decade in in Pauling that that has resulted in the wonderful staff that um administration that we've seen. Uh um Kim had um um a vision of um acade academic excellence for Pauling and and we have had her leadership have have gone from the bottom half of Duchess County of the 16 districts to now the around the top three. um that we um as an example our um science research project which has succeeded beyond to be honest with you my expectations um this this again 1100 um school district 1100 person um new music the arts also encouraged um this had not

168happened this would not have happened without in the recruitment of my opinion, the best teachers and administrators in Duchess County. That's that's where our 1100 man school district is. And um we we've got to give kudos uh um to Tim in recruiting u um this team. We a lot of a lot of these teachers that we have have given up something very very important to every teacher and that's tenure. They gave up tenure in their districts to come here and go through the tenure process again. That is saying a lot for the reputation that Pauling has and the confidence that the um teaching staff um has. Okay, I'll skip this. I'll skip this. Um let's not forget CO and um I I I won't forget CO. We were the first school in Duchess County to

169open um um online. We we also have to thank our technical staff uh um who worked um for these um students that were um do doing on mobile um learn learning. So, um um I just want to um give a a little I I thought thought um we'd leave a lot earlier um but um some um a message for Dr. D. Carlo. First of all, thanks to the board for hiring such a wonderful, skilled and experienced educator. Um I I don't know. He we ought to be thankful that he was available. Okay. Um um Miss uh u Dr. Fontana and her staff have left you Dr. Mr. D. Carlo um with a financially sound and dedicated staff um to serve um in these trying and in my opinion um very difficult financial um times to

170come. Again myself um enjoy your retirement Kim and um in the sun in um Florida. Thank you, Mr. Mowski. Okay, moving along to board remarks. Um, would any looks like Oh, okay. Okay. Sure. Please come on up. So, Mr. Mike Ganon on MTSS. Welcome. I'm just going to edit my remarks because I want to add on. I wasn't on the top of my mind. So, I'm sorry I don't know your name. I'm sorry I missed part of the Met game, too. So I wanted to echo the I clapped because personal experience MTSS is a huge undertaking and I have two people here what seemed like just started the process and were able to answer questions not like BS answers but like give you substance they're good. Okay. So when I came up here the first

171meeting I have a vested interest. I got grandsons here. So the school was open. parents elected Senate kids. So I applaud and I said I don't mind paying my taxes hearing this. I don't mind paying my taxes. So kudos to that. Now on the MTS, I just like to know what the goal was of MTS. You don't have to answer it now, but like the the middle the the middle school and high school principal kind of touched on it like what's the goal? We you focused on behavior. You focused on academics and academics. You focused on reading ma mathematics. What's the focus? because you got to have a goal and then you're going to measure towards that goal. Okay. Um I would do not focus on New York cut scores as how we're doing well.

172Okay. And if you want more explanation on that, ask the head of the math department of the high school of the algebra one regions what that means. Okay? I'll just throw that out to you. I'll talk to you specific. But do not rely on New York if we're doing well. If you want academic rigor, you got to focus here, not what New York State is doing and how things are going down. Okay? I can tell you from experience. Um, the maps is new. I would encourage us to use it. I heard it was just once my question and continue to use it. I'm glad to hear that phonics, some of you might not be aware, but if phonics is the way to go. So, I'm glad to hear they're going in that direction. What I'm

173curious to know is I heard about this uh the tiers 1, two, and three. What is how how is it determined? What's a tier two and a tier three? And I'll give you examples. Let's say you have a student in grade five. Now they come in fifth grade reading level. Now you have a student on a fourth grade reading level, a third grade reading level. What tier intervention are they getting? Is it grade four reading level? Is going to stay in grade five? Grade three is going where? How does that work? Okay. So I think that needs to be clearly laid out. And then the support. I hear this. I keep hearing we're going to get support teachers going to do small groups. Does every class have two teachers or does every class have a

174teacher and an aid? Because that is an intensive thing if you're going to do that. Okay. Then I'd want to know if you're pulling children out, is that baked into their schedule? Is it after school? Is it Saturdays? And there has to be a lot of PD behind this. A lot. This isn't not just a oneoff. Hi, I'm here. Goodbye. So, I'd like to know what's the PD schedule. How are these teachers going to be supported? And like you said, they're giving up a lot. Teachers coming here also giving up dollars, not only be tenure, and I know they have a new contract or whatever is going on. I didn't come here to talk about this, but you got to find a way, and I'm sure it is, make this a nice place to retain

175people because I heard coming to different board meetings, teachers come and go. And it's all anecdotal, but I think as a board, you got to focus on we got to keep teachers because you you doing this new training, this MTSS, every time you have turnover, you have another hole. You got to train someone else be involved in it. Okay. Um intervention. I'd like to know the um they talked about the uh reading programs. I'd like to know they they talked about Wilson and they're going to talk some other programs. Are they looking at rewards? What are the other Orton Gillingham based programs? Because Wilson is great for down here, but you have Anita Archer that's working on the middle school and a high school. So, I don't know what other programs are being evaluated or

176whatever. So, I just throw that out because it seems like they're looking at different things. Um and yeah it's a burden on teachers and is is there any uh consideration to reeval evaluate whether you're going to use fontis and pont pontis and panel for other reading levels another service I'd like to know why I exel is chosen maybe over something like i ready and like I said Wilson is kind of down here and you can talk you know better than I but there's a lot so I I just threw a lot out there I have a lot questions, some concerns. Good luck. And um again, those two ladies that were here, they have a lot. But I think you have to have a goal. How's it going to be measured? And one last thing I

177think um I'm sorry, I don't know your last name. Sorry. I think I know your first name, Scott. I don't know your last name. Or Zach, I'm sorry. I'm Yeah. Okay. Sorry. So, you asked about parent involvement and teachers being re, you know, students being referred. I believe a parent can ask to have their teach their student evaluated. Okay. So, this isn't just my child needs help. So, I think as a board, you have to get that out to parents because it seems like yeah, we're going to have these instructional leader teams, teachers, whatever. But there's a parent can ask the school to have the psychologist to evaluate them. And the resources aren't in the school. it goes outside which is more expensive. There's all sorts of ways to do that. Mr. Ganon, before you

178before you leave the podium or after you leave the podium, if you would give your phone number to the clerk, uh it would be helpful because the last time we tried to call tried to communicate with you, we weren't able to because your your number isn't in our student information system attached to your grandchildren. I wish it were because we could have more u more interaction, but Okay, I'll give the number. Yeah, please provide that. Thank you. Thanks again. Congratulations to you who won and uh good luck next year. Thank you, Mr. Canon. Okay. Uh moving along to board remarks. Would anybody like to make any remarks this evening? No. Okay. Thank you. Then moving right along to board vice president comments. Now you have to speak for us all. Uh good evening. It has

179been um a really busy month since our last meeting and I can't possibly mention all the great things that have happened. I know um everybody has been just as busy as I have, but a couple things I want to highlight. On May 8th, I attended the National Junior Honor Society induction here. Um wow. All 21 inductees prepared a slide and gave a well-written, well articulated, often humorous speech. They spoke of their countless hours of volunteer work, their strong academic performances, extracurricular activities, and their love of our schools and our community. And they chose as a group to do all the speaking themselves and to really own the whole ceremony. It was incredible. The following day, Mr. Arian and the sixth grade staff put together a fantastic Greeka despite the rain. And again, all of our

180students were so impressive. They were well spoken, well prepared, and they had great answers to our questions. That same night, we sent um our high school music students to the NISMA solo weekend held in Carmel. Our our high school band also attended the Nisma Majors uh in Carmel and earned a gold rating, which I'm told is a big accomplishment. Two weeks ago, our musical theater class at the high school performed a play that was entirely student written and student directed. Everything was done by the students. It was really impressive and is a reminder of one of them of the many unique opportunities we have in our school district. I'm sure many of you have been uh like me spending a lot of your nights at concerts. It's been two weeks of all the band and

181chorus concerts. It's always great to see the progression over time. At both the seventh and eighth grade concert and at the high school concert, we saw versions of our relatively new jazz band perform, as well as our orchestra and our guitar class. Mr. Belaluchcci addressed all of my sports highlights. Um, I do want to thank the PTA and the PTSA for a lot of great events in the past few weeks. The Wizards game was a huge success. The gym was packed, the kids had fun, and we had many, many uh members of our staff volunteering, and they kept us entertained as they played against the Wizards. And despite the cold and damp weather, the color run was also a big hit. There were over 200 people signed up. And again, staff from all three of

182our buildings volunteered their time to make it a great event. I want to thank all the candidates who ran for the four open board of education seats. I will repeat myself and say that we are lucky to live in a community with so many great people willing to give their time for our school district. Congratulations to Keith, Zach, and Michelle. I look forward to our productive year together. Thank you, Dr. Walsh. Um, moving on to superintendent comments. Thank you very much. I'm going to start with a little special presentation. So um it's we like to think of ourselves as a learning organization and learning is uh our core value and I have the pleasure of uh recognizing our board president and I'll read in part from a letter that I received from NISBA. Our records

183indicate that one or more members of your district or Bosey's board of education have earned one of our board excellence recognition awards and in this case Mr. Sandra Or has earned level one in NISBA's um levels of recognition, levels one through four. And um I just want to say that we appreciate your commitment to um learning more about board governance. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. [Applause] Um, I want to let the community know that the Duchess County uh mobile health bus will be at Holy Trinity on uh Thursday of this week between 5 and 7. And this results with our ongoing partnership with Duchess County Mobile Health. Um, and also the partnerships of our partner um organizations too. Um, June's an amazing month for school leaders. It's tiring, but it's um

184absolutely rewarding. And I have heartfelt congratulations for all of our scholars, our athletes, and our musicians and artists. It's hard to describe the pleasure I felt in being at the class C sectional meet uh which f which Mr. Baluchcci discussed. He didn't happen to mention that he had compliments following that meet from a 30-year AD, saying it was the best uh sectional meet that that individual had been to in 30 years. So he had many compliments uh and of course he's already thinking of ways to improve it but it was uh pretty spectacular to be there. It was wonderful to be uh to have our uh saludiatoran and valadictorian honored uh this past week at the Lur Hudson uh council school superintendent dinner where Claraara Jazinski earned the Duchess County scholarship in STEM which is

185a big honor. Um, and Emily was also recognized and also at the distinguished graduate breakfast that uh was held throughout Duchess County this past Friday. And it was very nice that Mr. Our was able to attend both of those along with Mrs. Ken and me. Um, as Mr. Baluchcci mentioned, uh, it's a pretty big deal that our saludiatoran earned a birth at the state championships in Triple Jump. Our musicians have been just plain extraordinary. People can't stop talking about the middle and high school concerts and the evening of the arts, including visual arts at the high school. Just today, Mr. Easter let me know that we will have 42 new string students next year in third grade. So, 42 second graders have elected uh to take strings next year. And I can't tell you how

186happy I was to see a full string orchestra on the stage at the middle school concert, complete with two adorable string bases. Uh, congratulations to all the musicians, the artists, and their teachers. Um, I look forward to celebrating our students graduating from CTI at their recognition ceremony this Thursday evening in Pikipsy. And it's also been a pleasure to share our wonderful school district today with Mr. D. Carlo. He had the opportunity to join our leadership team and hear in-depth updates on work in progress across our district goals. We also uh updated him on the progress of our vision area team. So I'll say just a little bit about that. Each of the three vision areas, belonging and wellness, academic excellence, and community engagement has a co-chair partnership of an administrator and a teacher. Each has

187met with Mrs. Wilson and each area is scheduling two meetings, one this spring and one in the summer. uh from those meetings and her protocols and agenda, they will identify three or four action steps that will take place over the next 18 months under each of those vision areas. Um and those will effectively be district goals for the coming year under those board vision areas. So, it's very exciting work and all of the staff that we've asked to participate have um been generous in their time and their uh their commitment to the work. So, we're very grateful for that. And that's my report. Thank you, Dr. Fontana. Moving along to consent agenda. Resolve that the board of education approves all asterisk items as the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? Motion, Mr. We have

188a second. Second, Mr. M. All in favor? I Okay, that's everyone. Um resolved that the board of education approve the minutes of the following meetings. Um business meeting uh public hearing May 6, 2025. Um I believe we'll Okay. Excellent. Do we have a motion? Uh Dr. Walsh, do we have a second? Second, Mr. Maine. All in favor? I I that's six one absention Mr. Richie. Okay. Resolve the board of education approve the minutes of the following meetings. The budget vote Tuesday May 20th 2025. Do we have a motion? Dr. Walsh. Do we have a second? Miss Kasaka. All in favor? I. I. That's six one abstension. Mr. Chi. Okay, where are we now? She want um It's I I I've got it now. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Um okay. Resolve that the board of education

189approve a sports merger between Smer Central. No, no, no, you're reading the um board of education. Oh, number four. You said Oh, well, but yeah, it's not number pressure screen now. Number it's amend the reorganizational meeting date. Moment, please. Here we go. Yes, I needed to refresh. You were right. Thank you, Peggy. Resolved that the board of education of the Balling Central School District hereby amends the April 22nd, 2025 reorg meeting date to hold its annual reorg meeting um to Wednesday, July 9, 2025. Do we have a motion? Mr. Scratchic, do we have a second? Mr. Tui, all in favor? Hi. Hi. That's everyone. So, we're moving new business. Um, okay. So, we have here is board of education retreat. So, we were I think talking about dates. Um, and we were thinking maybe of

190looking at that Thursday the 10th and uh Friday the the 11th. Um, if that would work for everyone, um, then we can try to align all of our presentations and get any speakers to come. Okay, if that works for for most. Okay, so that look good to everybody then? the 10th and 11th. So reorg on the 9th and then 10th and 11th for u meetings for the retreat and and we're thinking like a 8 to 4 9 to5 type type of Yeah, I think so. Unless there's you know other ideas around that. I know that I think uh Mr. Mine said that he would prefer the evening but could you make the days work? Oh, sorry. Yes, probably. Yeah, I would imagine. Yeah. Anybody else? You know, any preference for evening versus day or anything?

191All right. I mean, yes. I So, the answer would be something like an 8 to 4, 9 to5, 7 to 3. And um and then, you know, we'll have to talk about some retreat topics. Um, but you know, we can start we can start a Google sheet, you know, and start. Yeah. So, we'll start a shared document for people to certainly chime in on things they would like us to discuss. But if anybody has any ideas here tonight, we should certainly get those we can get those started, we'll reach out, make sure that we get our legal team available, probably NISBA. Um, but if anybody has topics they want to address right now. Yeah. And then obviously we can loop in um, you know, Mr. D. Carlo when he joins the board. Um I I

192was just going to offer the idea that obviously a task that we're tasked with this uh upcoming school year is hiring a new superintendent. So something that could provide something related to that I think would definitely be worthwhile. That's a good one among among many others. So if anybody else has ideas, you know, you don't have to bring them tonight. We'll start the Google sheet and we can keep track of that and discuss it. um more at the next meeting. Um if there's nothing more on that, I know that there was an idea maybe that was uh floating about that would be worth discussing. Yeah, sure. Um one thought I had is is dealing with um social media and specifically with uh cell phones now that um the state has come out with bell to

193bell. I know that's been voted on. My thought is this. Is there a way that we can start speaking to families, especially kids in say kindergarten, first and second grade, just about the dangers of giving kids uh smartphones at an early age? Um, my thought is maybe just to bring experts in to talk about specific harmful things that can happen and uh see if we can't work together with our community to really try to focus in on that and see if we can't I don't know if come up with contracts or things where we're just as a community committed to not giving kids smartphones uh too early. So, it was just an idea I thought of. Um, so I thought I'd throw it out there. I'd be I'd be willing to be involved in it,

194organize it, whatever needs to happen with that. I'd be more than willing to put the effort in. No, I think I think that's a, you know, fantastic idea to, you know, to maybe work with the, you know, with the district to see if there's some whether it's a workshop or, you know, um, bringing in, you know, elementary school parents, you know, and share information. Um, so let's, you know, the idea is planted and we'll, you know, we'll, we'll follow up and maybe put it into unfinished business so we can revisit it at the next meeting, you know, so we can start making some progress. I was just going to offer u one thing that was circulating on one of the class of 2030, whichever one it was for which of my kids, there was this

195like wait until 8th pledge that seems to be gaining a lot of traction. It's like hundreds of thousand people have already signed on. I you know something maybe to think about in there. But I I think that that is a perfect thing to look at um and beyond relevant and especially with policy we looked at the last policy meeting and this this uh this law that's coming into effect for the school year. So I think that that's a a great idea. Just to just to piggyback on what you said, I think a lot of the issue too is sometimes comes socially and it's maybe difficult for parents at times. Um, so if we can rally some more parents and just really understand that the negatives of the smartphones and have more kids not having it,

196I think it can gain traction with people so they're not feeling the stress of, well, I'm the only one in fourth grade that doesn't have a smartphone or so, I really think it's it's worthwhile talking about. And all of us in education know the the social media issues, the the Tik Toks, with the with the um laptop computers that just recently happened and things like that. So, I really think it's a it's just not it's not just the smartphone, it's just the social media and the all the negatives that come along with that. So, thank you. Thank you. So, that'll be a topic that we revisit and continue to track progress. Um then is there anything else that anybody would like to add to any business discussion tonight? See there is nothing more. I have

197an item. Oh, you do? Yes. Okay. Um so I want to let the board know that in in this gets back to Mr. Gratchet's question about how do we identify whether we have adequate support for MT, you know, to to implement a rich program of support, which is really all MTS is. It's a comprehensive system of support. Um, one of the variables is always your incoming um, kindergarten class and you don't know everything about your students um, at the time of the year that you're building a budget. You're, you know, you're making um, estimates around enrollment and our enrollment estimates have uh, have been just fine. Um, you know, they're based on live birth data. So, we have pretty good data, but you don't know the individual needs of the students. So what we are

198seeing is um a situation where we feel um that it would be better if we were able to have a ICT teacher in both kindergarten and in first grade as opposed to having teachers divided across those grades. Now ordinarily in a budget our size, I couldn't really come to you and say we need another teacher in uh June. It's just very difficult to do that. uh but we had a retirement that we didn't anticipate and we uh have no plans nor did we have any plans of replacing that teacher. So we have um the FTE that we can reallocate and um we are still in the process of seeking um you know we're going through a screening and interview and hiring process and um you know we're committed to hiring great people. So, assuming we

199can hire a great person, I believe that I'm going to recommend to you uh probably at the next board meeting that we create and appoint uh another teacher in the elementary tenure area. And uh the revenue does come from the fact that we're not we aren't going to replace um a a different FTE uh from a retirement. And of course, we always look very carefully for those savings. So, that's just part of our routine. And um but so it's it's actually a revenue neutral um I mean it's a expensene neutral uh proposition but we're going to recommend that we don't um simply save that position um but in fact allocate it to the elementary tenure area um and in special education excuse me special education tenure area signed elementary. So does anyone have any questions

200for me about that? I I have a quick one. So with the inclusion of this position, that would mean that there's a ICT teacher dedicated to kindergarten, an ICT teacher dedicated to first grade, and then what does it look like the rest of the way up the ladder? Just out of curiosity. That's we have um we have a dedicated teacher in second and third. In fourth grade, we will have two dedicated TAs. I believe we'll be able to assign a TA full-time into each of two sections of special education and have one teacher. So Kane first with Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. So um uh yeah, we are going to maintain two sections. Um and part of the part of our thinking there is uh to really create um a less restrictive environment for the

201children. We could conceivably have one section, but I don't think it's the best thing to do. Nor is it Dr. Sweeney or nor Dr. Kirkus' recommendation or nor Mrs. Rivas. So we're going to go with two sections. and we are able to allocate full-time TAs into each of those two sections. We can keep our um you know students who have ICT on their IEPs at a very manageable number in both of those classrooms and create a more heterogeneous environment I think than by having one section. Is is that the basis of the decision just because of the number of ICT kids in going into fourth grade or is it um the the reason to have two sections? Yes. um is because it does create a less restrictive environment for for the students and creates better

202better balance and um just a better classroom environment. But those decisions are always really made very close to the actual students. So um there are nine students. It's not because there are nine students. It's because we think this year that those nine students will be better off in two sections. Okay? You know, and we're small enough that we're able to do that. But one thing that's very difficult to do is to find a whole FTE in June because of your, you know, concerns about an incoming kindergartener. So that's the new piece. Uh the fourth grade is not a that's not new, but the fact that I I feel as though we have enough need in kindergarten that it would be better if we could dedicate a full-time teacher. And I we don't have two TAs

203that we can keep. Um we we don't we we can't actually do that also. So we really need the teacher. So after doing this, kindergarten would have its own ICT teacher. First, first would have its own second and third second would have its own. Third would have its own and then fourth grade. You just explained the the Okay. Thank you. And the numbers are not particularly different. So we do have similar numbers. I think we will have seven probably seven students in a you know and our classes are small which um can sometimes be a challenge to make sure they're sufficiently heterogeneous but uh so the numbers are not particularly different across the grades in terms of the classification rate. Uh but it it it seems like this is the best choice for grade four.

204um content uh you know the content is more complex more important to have a real range of students in the classroom and the TAs are uh I think going to be very very helpful um I will go ahead and when we're ready to when I'm ready to recommend the person it will be a create and appoint and that's what you'll see since you already understand why we're creating the position so thank you that's I'm really excited to hear that that we have that consistency with the one ICT teacher in each grade level. So, thank you. Okay, thank you everybody. Um, second visitors comments. We have one person, Miss Colleen Snow. I won't reread the visitor comments. Yeah, I think I remember them. So, good evening. I'm just going to make my comments um quick, but

205I'm not able to attend your last meeting to stay for the meeting till visitor comments. So, I publicly wanted to congratulate um all of you, Keith, Michelle, um Jennifer, and Zach, um for your election wins, and I'm wishing the board the best of luck in um the superintendent search. Um my when I was on the board, we did that. So um it's a lot of work and um it's a lot of work for again a volunteer group. So I wish you all the best with that. I also want to acknowledge Guido um Gabberino, thank you for your time on the board and your service and I wish you the best in your next endeavor after after this. I'm just doing thank yous quick because I won't be here. Um, Peggy Generoso. Um, I worked with

206her for six years from 2012 to 2018 on the school board and um, thank you for 20 years of service. Um, I really really um, have appreciated you and I wish you the best. And then lastly, um, Dr. Fontana, we hired Kim um, while I was on the board as the assistant superintendent for instruction. And um I I also wish you um the best you know as you leave Pauling and move on to to you know the next um journey for you. Um and lastly I know um Mr. D. Carlo left but I had an opportunity to see him at Rotary. Um Dr. Fant Fontana brought him to meet us and um I learned that he's also a Rotarian and he's also um been involved with being a town councilman and um a legislator. So

207there were there were things that we had good conversations with at Rotary. So thank you again and um All right. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Snow. And um we're down to board president comments and I echo everything that you said um Miss Snow. I'll keep it brief. I just want to say that tonight was a long meeting but it was uplifting. I think it was rich in content and gives us a lot of um energy to move forward into into the next year. Um so I'll just congratulate Mr. Tui Vogel Chratic and Dr. Walsh on your elections to the board and we're excited to start a new year together um come July. So with that I'll bid everybody a good night. Please like, share, subscribe and we'll see you next week. Oh boy. You think

208I would know that already. Peggy resolve that the board of education adjourn this meeting. The time is 10:14 only. Do we have a motion? Dr. Wash, do we have a second? Second, Mr. Maine. All in favor? I. All right.