00126 school year. Um, details regarding this are available for viewing. Um, there is a what we call our budget book. It's available in each of our school buildings at the Pauling Public Library, the Chamber of Commerce, and of course, there's an electronic version available on the district website on the budget page. Um, also following this hearing, uh, we will be releasing a newsletter with all kinds of details on the budget to every, uh, resident in the district. So, um, during our budget development meetings, we highlighted the many ways, um, that the budget is aligned with our board and district goals, specifically related to the delivery of highquality academic programs. And you can see a list here of all of those. The budget also uh maintains support for professional development, for social and emotional wellness, uh
002our prek program, and we're able to provide all of these supports while remaining below the allowable tax levy limit and keeping the capital portion of the tax levy below the 2020 baseline. Um so that that total budget uh that's proposed for 2526 is 49,89,437 and that res represents uh an increase of 3.82% over the current year budget. The uh state requires us to represent the budget in the three categories that you see here. It's called the three-part budget. The instructional portion of the budget is the largest um and accounts for 73.06% of the total budget. The capital portion accounts for 16.97% and the smallest portion is the administrative portion which accounts for 9.97% of the total budget. And then if we take a look at the tax levy, uh the anticipated levy for the 2526
003school year is 32,224,475. That is an increase of 2.24% over the current year. Um and it is below our allowable levy increase of 2.25%. Uh this slide shows the history of the capital portion of the tax levy. Um and you can see that we remain below the baseline from 2020 2021. Uh and in fact we are 672,000 and change below that baseline. So we've kept our promise in that respect. So uh this time of year we always uh have a little bit of a conversation around tax rates. Um and uh this can get kind of confusing and the first thing I need to say is that the numbers that we have right now are all tentative. So everything can change by the time August 1st rolls around. That's when everything will be uh uh permanent.
004Um in the meantime, we like to give people an idea of what's going on. So we have to look at three different factors and that's assessed values of properties, equalization rates, and the proportional share. Um so we're going to go through those and as we like to say, it's all math. So, uh, we start by looking at the assessed values by town. Um, and we compare one year to another. And on this chart, you can see that. So, we have five different towns in our district that that pay towards our taxes. And you can see that the assessed values for Beacon have decreased and all of the other uh four towns have increased. So, that will come into play when we do the math. The next slide shows the equalization rates uh for all five
005towns. So Beakman, Dover, and Pauling um have equalization rates that have decreased and East Fishkill and Patterson are remaining at 100% valuation rates. And when this happens, um it does skew the numbers and unfortunately it's not to the benefit of the districts who have decreased their equalization rates. And again, that's about the math. Um, and one thing that I want to say about those two things that we just talked about, assessed values and equalization rates, the school district has absolutely no control whatsoever over those numbers. Um the only thing that we have anything to say about is the amount of the tax levy and then this formula is how it's determined how that tax levy gets spread across the uh taxpayers across the district. Okay. So next we're going to talk about proportional share. So
006basically we take the assessed values and divide them by the equalization rate and uh then we determine the proportional share by town. We compare that from year to year. Uh and you can see uh the differences on this slide, but basically um properties in the sorry I'm on the wrong slide. Uh properties in the village of Pauling town and village of Pauling make up 93% just under 93% of the total taxes for our district. Okay. So estimated tax rates. Uh okay. This slide uh shows the percent change um in the tenative tax rates from the current year to next year. Um and you can see that Beakman, Dover, and Pauling's tax rates are increasing while East Fishkill and Patterson's are decreasing. And this is a pattern that's pretty much been happening for quite well since
007I've been here probably forever. Um so a couple of the things that are happening here is the equalization rate for Beakman Dover and Pauling have decreased. that impacts the formula and the proportional share for do and polling have increased which also impacts the formula. So then we like to give we like to give some kind of an idea and we just pick a an arbitrary amount of assessed value of $250,000 and what we want to do is look at how that impacts the different towns um in our district. So this shows that um for instance on a home valued at that amount in each of these towns, Beakman would have a $97 uh per year change. Do would have 300 I'm sorry, uh per 250,000 of assessed value. Um and you can see the numbers
008here and we're going to go into a little more detail on that. So a couple of examples, we like to do this each year. So if we look at um a home in the town of Pauling that is actually assessed at $150,000 um we we take that and we divide it by the sample assessed value which I said was $250,000. So the math right the proration on that is 6 and we said that um at full value of $250,000 uh the change would be $137 increase but because we have to multiply that by only6 um the actual estimated tax change would be an increase of $82 and then we look at the town of Beakman um and for instance the assessed value there um let's say it's 300,000. So that's actually over the baseline of
009the 250,000. So our uh divisor becomes 1.2 instead of 6 in the last uh example. Um and the change for Beakman was $97. So we multiply that by 1.2 and we get $116 increase. And this is something that um you know basically you can do based on your own assessed value. just apply those uh those different calculations. So again um just a reminder uh two main resources for additional details on the budget. The full budget document is available at our school buildings, our polling public library, the chamber of commerce and on our website. Um and there's a lot of information out there. It includes the principles that we use in developing the budget, the details for every line item that's in the budget, the three-part budget, um, and also a lot of information about our
010district's accountability measures. And as I stated before, um, everybody will be receiving a copy of the budget newsletter in the mail. Uh, should be going out tomorrow. And uh I'm going to end with a reminder um that everyone who's eligible and qualified should vote on Tuesday, May 20th. The polls will be open from 7:30 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. and the vote is being held in the polling elementary school gymnasium. That's that I have. Thank you, Miss Hessin. We will now take any public comment. Um on the budget only my name is Harvey Matovski. Um live lived in Holmes New York for 40 odd years. um had a degree in economics and um I I I don't know if these kids understand this budget with this new math going on, but do you use new math
011for this? Um I again have to congratulate um the current school board and past school boards and um um achieving um um again approximately a 2% increase. Um when I came on the school board, I was on the school board for 10 years. Um increases were five and 6% a year. Um when I came on the uh uh um school board, the um um superintendent at that time, and I don't know if the union is here, if some of the teachers, some of the teachers we would remember, um some some 15 or 20 staff cuts were instituted. Things were a hell of a lot different. Um uh I I um we came on the whole idea is blueprints for the future and that's for these kids. That's all that matters to also taxpayers. I won't
012forget you guys. Um but uh but um I I hate to throw a little bit of rain u um um on the parade, but um we we have to face some reality with what's going on in Washington and which is going to spill over to Albany. Uh uh um this this year's budget was passed at the help of additional state aid that press past school boards um had lobbied for and and and um various other programs and um quite a bit of money from Washington. Um that's not going to happen in reality. I mean we could hope but that it doesn't look like that. Um the re the reality is that the 206 and 207 budget will have substantial um um um headwinds and which could either result in um either a large tax increase
013or a reduction in um academic and sports programs which nobody wants and it's going to be a hopsian choice that that nobody would want to make. um everything is going to cost more. Um the help from Washington and Albany probably won't be there if if you read the tea leaves that's going on. Um um gr it was just announced that grants for mental health um are just eliminated by Washington. Um um I I I recall that during CO um because kids were stressed, there were problems, we were able to hire some mental health aids. I don't know if that's going to be um possible. Um free lunch programs, will those be continued? No, I don't think anybody knows. That's going to be up to the um new um superintendent and the new um school board
014which is going to be elected um I think on the 20th. Um um health insurance is going to go up. We don't know if the Medicaid reimbursements are going to be there. I I I I don't want to depress you kids, but re really u um but um school boards up to now h have looked to to keep the programs for the kids uh um going and and I would hope that current school boards would and if the choice comes either a a little bit higher increase in taxes. I would hope they would take that choice, increase taxes rather than um do what was done over 10 years ago by cutting programs and cutting staff. Um Makovsky, you're almost at your time. If you could wrap up, please. Well, I I I'm almost finished and
015I don't think this Okay, be patient. Everything's going to go up in price from from the buses that we buy already the tariffs have increased them as the president mentioned the other day. We're going to have to ration our pencils and supplies. Um, it's going to be a difficult choice. What I'm glad that um that there's a large audience. What the parents and school board could do to mitigate this is pick up the telephone rather than your computer and or your cell phone and call our representative in Mr. McCassy. I'm going to ask you again to wrap up, please. You're over your time. Almost. Okay. make the call to Washington because they're going to be voting on it in the very near future and and that's going to be of the the greatest help. If
016our representative in Washington who wants our votes two years from now, uh um the phone call is the greatest thing that you could do. Thank you. Anybody else would like to speak on the budget, please come forward. All right. Seeing as there is no one, we will close the budget hearing. Resolve that the board of education close the public hearing on the 2025 2026 budget and convene reconvene the business meeting. The time is 7:19. Can I get a motion? Miss Spielbergel. Second. Second. Mr. Mine. All in favor? I. I'm going to invite uh Miss Fontana or Dr. Fontana and Miss Saraphini to present a special award. Thank you very much, Dr. Walsh. And I'm going to begin by just saying that it's a very great pleasure to ask Mrs. Saraphini to share this award with
017this audience. Um, you know, it's not very novel for a superintendent to say that we entrust to our bus drivers. The most uh precious uh resource that we have in our community and families do it every single day and the gratitude of an entire community goes to our bus drivers. But I want to thank Mrs. Saraphini for going um an extra step and really trying to make the gratitude of the Pauling community for our exceptional bus driver and in fact all of our staff so palpable. We were able to be at a special ceremony attended by the county executive and the coordinator of school safety for Duchess County honoring our bus driver of the year. And Mrs. Saraphini always supports her staff and it was a a very special day that she made. So I
018think she has a few things to say and would like to read a special nomination that um garnered Mr. Bardau this award. So Mrs. Saraphini, please. Absolutely. Thank you Dr. Fontana for asking me to come here tonight um to share this with all of you. Um it is a privilege and an honor to work in the polling school district where I'm from with this group of drivers, monitors and office staff. Um I belong to the Mid Hudson Transportation Supervisors Association which is part of NYAP which is New York Association for Pupil Transportation along with the Duchess County uh Traffic Safety Board. um at our meeting uh back in February um they reminded us that it was that time of the year for us to think about maybe a driver in our uh our yard that
019we might want to nominate for school bus driver of the year. So I came back from the meeting and I sat in my office and staff was in and out and I said, 'You know, if I asked you if there was one amongst us who we would nominate for this, it was unanimous that we would nominate Mr. Alan Bardau. So that and and so much more. So, I put some thought into it and I said, I have to write a letter to recommend him. So, I'd like to read that to you and then I'll tell you um how that all went. So, dear members of the NYAP awards committee, I am pleased to write in enthusiastic support of Alan Bardau, a dedicated school bus driver with the Pauling Central School District for the school bus
020driver of the year award. Allan has been an invaluable member of our transportation team since 2012. And throughout his time here, he has consistently demonstrated professionalism, compassion, and dedication that make him an exceptional candidate for this honor. Allen's calm, eventeered demeanor has made him a standout within our department. He brings an immediate sense of calm to any situation, whether on the road or in a stressful moment. His ability to manage challenging circumstances with grace and poise, has earned him the respect of both staff and families alike. Beyond his role as a school bus driver, Allen's commitment to his community is truly remarkable. As a member of the Dover Fire Department and certified in CPR, AED and basic first aid, his skills contribute to the safety and well-being of all students in our district. His selflessness
021and readiness to assist whenever whenever needed demonstrate the kind of rel leadership and responsibility we value so highly. One of my personal favorite qualities in Allen is his unwavering consistency. He is the same every single day. Reliable, calm, and steady. I have witnessed firsthand, especially in his role as the medical technician at the local summer camp where my grandchildren attend. Allan has earned the affection and trust of the kids there who fondly call him Dr. Al. I think my granddaughter did that. In a setting where many kids might not acknowledge or interact with staff in roles like this, Allen's warm, caring approach has made him a favorite. The children love him because of his consistency, reliability, and his ability to always provide a calming presence no matter what the situation is. Allen's willingness to take
022on any route, support his colleagues, and assist with a variety of tasks reflects his outstanding work ethic. He consistently transports some of our district's most valuable and vulnerable students, doing so with incredible care and compassion. His dedication to his work and as colleagues is evident in everything he does. New staff members are especially fortunate to have him as a mentor as Allan is always there to offer guidance, share his knowledge of district routes, and help them navigate our protocols. For all these reasons, I wholeheartedly recommended Alan Bartau for the school bus driver of the year award. His consistency, caring nature, and dedication to the students and colleagues truly set him apart. Allan is an asset to our district, and I believe he embodies the qualities that should be celebrated by this award. So, I sent
023it along with all of the other documentation, his license, and an abstract and all kinds of things. And a few weeks later got the call from Bill Johnson, Duchess County traffic safety coordinator. And he said, you know, Pam, 980 drivers. And he said, we have chosen your Mr. Alan Bardau. And he said, "We had a lot of really good applicants, a lot of really qualified." He said, "But when we read the part about him being Dr. Al at the camp and the fact that the kids at a summer camp know who he is and really care about him, just set it over the top. So, I am more than pleased and I have to say he pro truly proved that he deserved this this past Saturday when he led six buses to Six Flags New
024England for the day and kept everybody safe in line on time and uh made me feel a little more comfortable all day with drivers out for 17 and 1/2 hours and he kept in touch with me. So, thank you for that. And no one could deserve this more than Allan. So, thank you very much. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] A was bestowed upon Allan by the transportation. the part uh incredibly handsome, right? Was modifying out. Okay, that too. But this incredibly handsome plaque was bestowed upon Mr. Bardau at the ceremony and I wanted the board members and the public to see it. I also um it's too small for you to realize, but um there are I think about 20 uh bus drivers of the year on this plaque and two of them are from Pauling. So
025if you consider the size of the fleet, that's a pretty extraordinary record for uh not only Mr. Bardau but his colleagues in transportation. So I would like to ask Mrs. Saraphini to make a special home for this beautiful plaque in the transportation department. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. [Applause] All right, we are now going to move on to our curriculum updates. I know many of you have been waiting very patiently. I want to congratulate the students on their very impressive behavior, waiting so patiently. And I will turn this over to Dr. Kirkus. Yes, thank you. I'm very excited to move on to the curricular part of tonight's uh tonight's meeting. um because we have some very very special guests. Some of our youngest teachers from Pauling Elementary School are joining us to share
026some of their work with you. Um first I'm going to start with just some data like I've done for all the other um board presentations. I'll try to go very quickly through it. It's very similar to how we've done it before. It will be posted on the instructional web page as well as attached to the board agenda. So, our first slide here has the the uh the summary of the New York State grades 3 through 8 math assessments. Um, and what you'll notice with this is that just like we've done in the past, um, the yellow bars are the district scores and the blue bars are the New York State comparison scores uh, for each grade level. The one thing that's different about 8th grade is you'll notice that there's a grade eight math and
027there's also a regions 8 math. Uh we have students that take the um algebra 1 regions in eighth grade. That's the the regions 8 and then the students there are some students that take um grade 8 math. So that's why that's a little bit different than what you've seen in the past. I have two different years um summarized on this particular slide as we've done in the past. This next table shows the tested versus non-ested for the 23 24 school year by grade level and it breaks it down by achievement levels. Again, note that in 8th grade we had 22 students that enrolled in regions algebra and took the region's exam rather than the eighth grade math assessment. They do not need to take both [Music] exams. The data for this table comes from bars
028on the web platform that we subscribe to. This allows us to see how Pauling compares to other Duchess County schools in 2324 with respect to proficiency levels. If you look at the last column, which is the percent level three and above, that's the P proficiency levels, you'll see that roughly 45% of Pauling students in grades three through eight as a whole scored proficiency in math last year, which puts us um on this table. You'll also notice um two columns in the middle of the table next to each district's name that outlines the percentage of L students and the percentage poverty in the district which provides additional information as you review the charts throughout the next few slides. This table has a great deal of information that outlines achievement results by particular subgroups in Pauling on
029the 3 through8 math assessments. As you can see, if we look at all students, again, roughly 42% of students scored proficiency in ma on the math assessments, which is that bright orange box on the top right. When we look at data like this, we specifically look at where significant subgroup gaps occur when when compared to all students as a whole. I've highlighted some highlighted some of those uh subgroups that show a greater than 10% gaps. Uh similar to school districts around the state, country, and world, we've seen gaps in mathematics that were a result of interrupted instruction during COVID in building mathematical foundational skills. Each year, we continue to try and fill these gaps using a variety of digital and other resources while still presenting the new material for the course. I'd like to now
030move on to the regions um results. Uh this first table here again uh shows uh Pauling compared to New York State schools across across the state. Um and here you'll see the um the two different years summarized again using bars on the web. We see we ranked seventh as compared to other Duchess County schools for with respect to proficiency on the algebra exam for 2324. We had roughly 79% of our students scoring proficiency on this algebra regent exam. And that's that uh bright orange uh line uh uh row across the chart on this table. In the third and fourth column again you'll see the percentage of L and percentage um poverty in each district which can provide some insight as we look at the rest of the charts excuse me. Similarly we've broken down the
031algebra results by uh particular breakout groups. Again, 79% of all students scored proficiency on the Algebra Regent exam. Again, the bright orange uh box on the upper right hand corner. Uh using that same threshold for uh gaps that are greater than 10% uh from the all the all students uh number the 79% we see that um 20% of our students with disabilities scored proficiency versus the 79%. So that's that's an area that we're working on. 64% of our Hispanic students scored proficiency versus 79% of all students. And finally, 59% of economically disadvantaged students scored proficient versus 79% of all students. And I've highlighted that in the last column under notes where um we're showing where those gaps are more than 10%. These next two slides basically just outline uh the other two uh regions exams
032in mathematics that we have. Um what you see on this chart is the results from the 2324 geometry regions exam. Some students do choose to continue in their mathematics course works beyond the required algebra 1 and take regions geometry andor regions algebra 2. Uh here we see achievement on the region's geometry cos along with breakout group information below it. And similarly we have the algebra 2 results on the next slide. Again New York state is on top. Uh we compared to New York state and our proficiency levels and algebra 2 and then by subgroup is the chart below it. And again I know these are small numbers. I know it's a lot of information. This is all available on the instructional uh web page for the district uh site and it's also attached to the
033board agenda. And finally, I'll move on to the AP math course enrollment and Duchess Community College dual enrollment uh and results. This table basically outlines the AP enrollment and achievement uh for the for the number of students that actually um this is just the enrollment chart, excuse me, for the number of students that choose to take AP exams at our high school. Each colored section pertains to the enrollment for each course. AP calculus and AP computer science over the past two years. Generally, the AP calculus course, which is the green top two bars, is typically a senior course. Our AP computer science has more varied enrollment across the grades as you can see. And these are the orange rows on the bottom of the chart. The second column on this chart shows the number of
034students in each uh grade who choose to actually who chose to actually take that course in the last two years. And then the third column says the total enrollment in that particular grade. This way you can see in that final uh column the percentage of each grade level that's actually choosing to take AP ex AP ex AP courses in mathematics. And this next slide has the same information but basically broken out by demographics. And again the blue chart on the left is AP calculus and the yellow chart on the right is AP computer science principles. What I've done here is outline the AP math scores for those two courses from last year. Again, our our uh our enroll the numbers are small, so I can't break it break it out by subgroup because it would
035be identifiable to particular students. But you see uh the green row is AP calculus uh AP scores from last year and the orang-ish row is AP computer science principles uh scores, excuse me. Okay, so these final three slides outline information about our Duchess Community College dual credit course in statistics that we are very pleased to offer in Pauling High School. It's a popular course and it's mostly taken by seniors with some juniors also choosing to take it. As you can see here, last year we had 23% of our student of our seniors and 6% of our juniors enroll in Duchess Community College statistics, last school year. And here's the same information uh broken out again by uh demographics for last year's enrollment in the um dcc stats course. And then finally, uh, once again, we
036have the scores from the DCC, DCC, Duchess Community College Statistics, um, course last year. And it's a small number, so it's not broken out by subgroup. So now for the fun part, the more fun part, I'd like to turn it over to Diane Pyador for the uh, math curriculum updates from the elementary school. Thank you, Dr. Kirkus. Welcome board and community members. Um, so I'm here tonight to give you an update on math happenings at Pauling Elementary School. So um in every classroom throughout Pauling Central School District, we work towards board uh district board goals and a big uh board goal that we do work a lot on is district bo board goal two innovative curriculum providing enriching learning experiences and ensuring comprehensive supports. Teachers in Pauling strive to engage all students by having them
037take control of their own learning. Uh you will when you enter a classroom, you'll see collaborative learning, students teaching other students um applying math to everyday real life situations and um just having fun and being engaged in math. and Pauling teachers are also always looking to learn new and exciting math um strategies and ideas to take back to the classroom. So, and tonight you will see a little bit of that what uh several teachers went to 10 county men math. It is an annual conference uh with professional development event for educators throughout the Hudson Valley region. educators here took part in workshops to learn and exchange ideas to apply in the classroom. So, as you can see, we were lucky enough to meet Greg Tang and um attend one of his workshops. If you don't
038know who Greg Tang is, he is a math guru in education. He's known throughout the country for his math picture books and his engaging way to teach math in the classroom. So you can see how the teachers especially my good friend Miss Stipeg was so excited to meet Greg Tang. Um and tonight uh we will present the children will actually present something we the teachers have learned at this um conference. So Mr. Tang taught teachers a strategy he devised to subtract across zeros, which is a concept that is very challenging for many third graders. Miss Dipbec and Miss Hickey took their learning back to the classroom and taught their students the strategy and the third graders quickly mastered it. They were amazing. They had a Greg Tang jam with Mrs. Sawaka's class. students became teachers
039and after a mini lesson they worked with partners to apply and teach their knowledge. Now they are all fans of both of they are all fans of both this clever strategy and Greg Tang math. So here now I'm going to turn it over to Audrey Maine and Brley Graic to sh give you a demonstration of subtracting across zeros. [Applause] and I'm going to put a problem for you to teach adults. See? Yes, I am. You're going to teach Mr. Chuchi right here. You ready? Big one. Show your stuff. Here we go. In the 10th place is a one. comes a tech. Oh, that becomes a [Laughter] Excellent. That is excellent. What is your first wonderful job and using math correct math? Great. Now, can I ask you a question? So, it looks to me like
040you're keeping this number the same. It's still not But you're borrowing parts of it so that the t place and the one place are more than the 10. So how did you But you want to find a number that's bigger than five from it. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. So, I just wasn't sure. How did you decide? Is it always a hundred that you take from the first number? Okay. And is it always 10? Don't make it too hard. You can help. people. [Laughter] I was thinking Oh my goodness. is part of this. So how do I show that I know that I'm going to be [Laughter] Okay. So, now I've got [Laughter] So 7 - 49 start. [Music] [Laughter] You can tell I think this is going to You want do you want to
041try it? All right. You know, I should have done that, too. Do you want to get up from so I can I should have taken a picture of it. [Laughter] so that I don't know you probably you probably wanted all of them have been more than 100. So why have all the wonderful work if the if the quot more I think 200 I'm not sure it'll work. Wait what? Yeah, that's good. 200 something. 90%. [Laughter] Yeah, that's good transition to the understand. All right, hang ters. You want to get too Can I get your picture again? Okay, Tangers. Um, so the everyone thought you did a great job teaching. What wonderful teachers we have. Look at all the future teachers of Pauling. Look at this. Going to all be awesome job. Give them a round
042of applause. And um you know, thank you families for coming out and sharing your beautiful mathematicians with us tonight. We all are going home with something new we learned tonight. So I guess um the children Okay. So um they could you know they could um go home. I know you have to wake up like they could go home. Um you are dismissed but um thank you again guys. I know. Thank you so much. Hi guys. Get a good night's sleep. Materials over Tangers. Just bring all the materials over to Miss Stipek and Miss Hickey. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Rainy did a great job. ready to go now, too. I've learned enough tonight. Congratulations. Morning comes early, right? Congratulations. Hi guys. All right. So, um I will continue with our math update so that we
043can get um going. I still Mr. My colleague Paul Mock still has to present middle school and high school as well. Um, so you can see here in uh Pauling Elementary School, we do use investigations as our math program and investigations encourages students to work collaboratively and explain their mathematical thinking. So we're very big on that in our classroom. Um, this is our fifth year using investigations. Investigations also comes with digital tools where students need to use their critical thinking to solve problems. Here, first graders are thinking of a rule of the shapes that are inside the circle. Instead of being given the rule, they need to stretch their thinking and make up the rule according to the shapes in the circle. And from our youngest math learners, um, we always start with concrete. So,
044a lot prek and kindergarten uses a lot of manipulatives such as cubes, uh, shapes, tiles, and here kindergarten students are measuring his shoe uh, with non-standard units like cubes. And in preK, Miss Antonio's class is sorting for different shapes. So, that just shows you that um, you know, from preK to fourth grade in the elementary school and so on, the scaffolding that occurs. We try to we teach all our kids uh from pre prior knowledge and in addition to our program we also use a couple of digital uh or programs and we use as a standardbased program and this helps us to as teachers to identify any gaps in learning and um teachers can also assign concept maybe a student struggling in a certain area, we can assign that concept within this program. So, it's
045a great tool to analyze. It helps us in the MTSS um process. Um and it's just great data to help us out and the kids love it and it, you know, it really even gives them more um opportunities rather than pen and paper all the time. They get to use a computer. We also use Reflex which is I just started using it in first grade but I believe second through fourth uses it as well. It's a fact fluency program and it's game based so it's really fun. I mean my kids when I say all right 15 minutes on reflex today practice to practice their math facts. They get super excited. It's it's like playing a video game and they they don't even realize they're practicing their math facts. I know fourth grade has been using
046it. So here's some data from fourth a fourth grade class. You can see in the when they started out using reflex uh they were only at 20 about 20%. Now they're currently at 99% knowing their fact fluency. So that their growth was almost 80%. And I know the teachers rave about it. So um I'm really excited to start using it in my class. Uh we also use first in math, another game based fact fluency. And it's more it's it's really fun. They they have to figure out um what three numbers make up go together to either a sum or a uh by multiplication. So it's a lot of critical thinking in there as well. Um in the elementary school, we also love to have math theme days. So, in preK through 1st, we love to
047celebrate the hundth day. Here's students in Mrs. Panzer's class are counting to 100 with dots and gumballs to make gumball machine and students in Miss Silbert's class counting 100 Cheerios to make a necklace. And it's a nice family engagement as well because they invite parents to join in the fun. And in first grade, um, you know, we took it up a little bit further. They dress up. They um design shirts. So we have a lot of arts. We really crosscurricular when we have these days. We include arts, we include music, um include game playing and uh partner working. So it's a really engaging day for them. And thanks to Miss Hickey, she introduced Pi Day in the elementary school. You know, you think pi as a middle school concept, but from our youngest learners, they
048were learning all about circles, circumference, and diameter. So, you could see we're really building upon uh building that foundation in the elementary school. So, it's really fun. And uh that's it for me. I'm going to turn it over to Carl to talk about middles and high school. So, thank you so much. Um, all right. So, I'm going to take you through uh first the middle school. Um, and I think one thing you'll see thematically is just um the focus in all grade levels just about engaging students um in learning mathematics and uh all sorts of modalities here. So, uh in this is the first picture of fifth grade. Uh here we have um a teacher who shared with me a new uh something she learned this year and it was having students share their expertise.
049So you can see on the left side um students were able to sign up um to peer tutor uh their classmates about their uh fraction skills. And then uh something else in fifth grade you got here is uh in fifth grade we really ramp up fractions and multiplying fractions which is a pretty difficult concept. Um but you can see students are drawing arrays here and they're uh trying to really conceptualize what it means to take a fraction of a fraction. Uh moving on to sixth grade. Um here you have excuse me uh moving on to sixth grade. Uh we have here students uh teaching the class I think going over the homework on the left. Uh and again you can see them working in groups uh and discussing the math together. Uh coming back to
050pi again. So um here we're discovering pi in seventh grade. Um this is one of the big years where they really go into the properties of a circle and really discovering what pi is. Um, in this activity, you can see it's a little hard to see, but there's they have a circle that they actually physically cut up into all those uh little segments there, and then they fit them together to create what's effectively a parallelogram. Uh you can see how one length is the radius, the height, or I guess the height of the the parallelogram, there's the radius, and then uh you can see that it's about three times that length um on the on the bottom there. So that's how they're discovering the area inside a circle. And uh on the right side they
051had students had a competition for memorizing the first 100 digits of pi. Uh something else in seventh grade they learned about is statistics uh and percentages. So here you saw them learning about percentages and they actually had a whole display in the hallway about um different percentages based on themselves. So you can see they they took data on all the students in the seventh grade class and came up with a few here. This is just two out of uh they had I think about 30 different of these posted in the hallway. It was pretty fun. Uh moving on to eighth grade. Um so there's the thinking classroom model that this is my classroom and here you can see students uh working on whiteboards and on windows and around the room. Um they have discussions based
052together in these groups of three. Um, it's something I've been doing for a few years and uh, it just gets them up and moving uh, and talking to each other much more. Um, something I do because they're working in groups and talking with each other. I do have a little bit of, uh, which is not really it's well, I'll show you what it is right here. There's there's standards. There's New York State standards, uh, social emotional learning standards. I look to those for 6th through 8th grade. And I, with the help of the students come up with questions, um, and help them come up with questions that we can do. So this is to cultivate that supportive inclusive environment. Uh middle school is a tough time for for kids. So it's good for them to
053have conversations and it just it's really just one minute at the beginning of class. Uh so here's a question I asked at one point about empathy. Uh which also corresponds with the uh some of the work we do around that goal one the district goal one right there. Uh the tiger project in the middle school as well. Um, something else I've been working on is making sure that um, after a quiz, uh, students have an opportunity to, uh, get feedback on how they did and, uh, practice what they got wrong. So, you'll see that there's corrections. I use this, the high school, uh, introduced me to this great program called Delta Math. Um, and it's able to give, uh, targeted feedback and extra practice based on their quiz, and then they go back and do
054more of that. Uh, and something I'm working on this year is trying to get students to uh, really reflect on why they got things wrong. Here I have a picture of their notebook. So in their notebook, they have to go after the quiz and based on what they learn, uh, try to figure out what went wrong and add that as well. All right, so let's talk about the high school next. Um, I'm going to start here with applied geometry. So um this is uh in this you'll see all these constructed um housing projects where the students learned about quadrilaterals and then created blueprints using floorplanner.com and then actually went to build uh the plan of a 3D model of a house in that in that sent from the new witchup. Oops. Let me go back.
055There we go. Um, another class here, math, art, tech, combining arts and, uh, math and technology. So, here they're designing a little bit more. Uh, this looks like a kitchen. Um, and also really getting that hands-on applying the mathematics there. Moving on to a little bit from algebra 2. Um, on the left, it's funny. We saw pi all the way in elementary school. It's such an important number, of course, that uh, it's still a concept that you'll see again all the way through algebra 2. So you can see they have a chain on the lefts there of colors and each color represents a different digit in pi. And students sometimes have a hard time uh visualizing what an irrational number is where you have no repeating uh it never ends but it's also never repeating
056the digit. So you can really see how that rainbow just doesn't have a pattern in it. So that's what a wonderful activity. Uh and then they also created a Padlet here to celebrate Pi Day, finding all these different uh circles in nature. And uh they created this with using technology. Uh and of course we uh all right, algebra 2. So more with algebra 2. Here we have um as you can see this is a theme. So I uh worked with the high school and we all got together and uh talked more about how to get students involved. So, this is them doing a station review. Um, getting students moving around the room again is a great way to get them talking about the math rather than just sitting still all all the time. They do
057sit still and obviously learn from the teacher, but this gets them actually processing and learning from each other. Uh, moving on to DCC elementary statistics. Um, so students, this is a college level class where for their mid-year project, they have a choice project. So on the left side you'll see a students uh gathered data on the mean price globally versus locally of ski lift tickets. In the lower left you'll see um from that collected data from different uh ski lifts pricing they could see uh they could compare the global versus local pricing and that's called a box plot right there. So you can see the distribution of values. Uh and then the upper right they do some uh analysis. There's a p- value analysis there and forming I believe yeah confidence interval about the costs
058I think it looks it's like in euros there I guess that's the currency they used but um the 95% of costs were between uh 47 approximately and 67 euros uh moving on here we have another project so we have uh somebody studied the freshman 15 I suppose they they heard about that coming up in college which is really funny um so they they were what looking at is that's true that college actually college students actually gained 15 pounds during their freshman year. Um and again they're using uh confidence intervals and and looking at some data there. And then on the right side you have another uh sleep and stress study that they did. Uh another class we have here is uh intro to engineering design. Um and here students were tasked with building h household
059items uh everything from a catapult catapult to um other things as well. Um, and then here they were 3D designing. Um, and what's interesting here is that they looked to um, create functional containers. So, these are containers that have working hinges and clasps all uh, 3D printed at the high school. And here's some students with their creations. Uh, some some more creations from this class as well. Um, as you can see, there's just lots of projects. Everything's very much hands-on and in the design space here, this is more personalized project. All right. So, in pre-calculus, um, we're getting towards uh the upper grade levels here in in high school. Um, students learn about sign, cosine, trigonometry, all those things. And you can see that they're going outside and using uh what looks like angles and
060shadows and the lengths of shadows to uh calculate the height of the back of the high school building using mathematics uh and indirect measurement. And then uh all the way up to AP calculus. Here you can see students again walking around uh working on problems here um processing studying for uh one of their exams here using the whiteboards to work on problems together. Um, I have a video here that's going to play I think in the background. So, uh, there's another AP class, computer science principles. You can start this or do you start this? Oh, there it goes. Thanks. Um, so, uh, this is AP computer science principles. Uh, again, they they have a creative performance task here. So, they have to create, uh, a project where, in this case, it's an app. Uh, and
061the criteria for this were created by the college board. So, they have a set of criteria of what their app has to do. Uh, this one's with JavaScript. Um, it's just a little video showing an app a student created in this class. Uh, you can see that they're learning coding. Um, on the left you see the app. On the upper right there, you see the block coding. Um, which is a really visual. Excuse me. And yeah. Okay. Thank you everybody. If there's any questions, we'll take them now. Uh thanks to everybody who participated in that presentation. Especially thank you to all the students who like I said sat so patiently through the start of the meeting and then did such a nice job um presenting and then presenting to all of us. That is certainly
062not easy to do. So I was very impressed. I'll open it up to questions if any board members have questions. A question for Miss Pyor. Um so first of all, thank you. You guys constantly amaze me like all of these presentations with just how engaging everything is. If school was that engaging when I was a kid, I don't know how much more I could have learned. Um, but I was just kind of wondering um maybe at the middle school level too, but in the elementary school um how in in what ways other than like the computer are we really meeting the kids um where they are? Whether that's like kids who are falling behind, how are we helping them catch up? and kids who may be excelling more in math like how are we really
063pushing them and challenging them to do more and you smoke speak at the microphone I'm sorry thank you so we do um like for most classes we do work with small groups so those who um you know it's it's guided math as well so we determine you know what which students need uh certain work in areas and then we pretty much kind of have um small guided group while the rest of the kids are doing um maybe some math games and not all of them are on computers. We we do play a lot of math games especially with um you know with dice or um uh other kinds of manipulatives. So that's how it you know me personally and I'm sure other the other teachers do it as well uh for the higher level kids
064you know maybe more critical thinking kind of projects um so wait is that answer okay you're welcome anybody else okay well thank you guys again for being here thanks for all of your work that you put into your present presentations and for all the work the elementary teachers especially did to prepare the students. That was really impressive. Um so thank you for being here. We're going to now move on to our [Applause] um we'll now move on to our English as a new language curriculum update with Miss Cassidy and Miss Garcia. First of all, thank you so much for having us. Um, I know it's a long night, so we're going to make it brief and tell you about our amazing English language learners. My name is Jessica Garcia. I'm the curriculum leader for grades
0657 through 12. And this I'm Megan Cassidy. I am the curricul curriculum leader for the elementary school. Right. So, we're going to start off a little bit with some data. Um, and the English language learners currently at Pauling are in five different categories. So, it's entering. Our entering students are the ones who have just arrived, are learning English and um just starting to really use basic, you know, yes, nos. Um we're really providing a lot of scaffolds and they're much more comfortable in their native language initially. Then we have emerging. This is usually about the one year or so that they're exposed to the language. Um transitioning is beyond that one and a half. And we do this data based off of NISSLAT, which is the test that we give at the end of the
066year to kind of see exactly what their language proficiency level is. Then we have our expanding students. Um expanding level is uh usually when your students are speaking, you know, um they're very comfortable speaking, listening, reading, writing. They're just needing that initial support. Usually that's at about a three maybe even to five year mark depending on what type of learner. And then you have your commanding which is when the students have passed the nicl lot and um we provide them with one to two years of additional support. Okay. Do you want to go on to go one? So um we tend to focus as um just to go back to the transitioning student because like Jess said they are the student that typically you know takes 3 to 5 years to move on to the
067next language uh acquisition level to expanding. So, um, those transitioning students do not receive a pullout stu, uh, service from us, that's where we push into the classroom and we work with the content level teacher to make sure that those students are receiving the additional support that they need. The way that support is provided in our entering and emerging students receive standalone instruction and also a push-in support, whereas transition, expanding, and commanding just receive a pushin support. So we go into the ELA classrooms to um really support them there. So similarly to the math department, we really wanted to um put everything around our goals. So we're going to talk a little bit about how the ENL department provides a welcoming and supportive and inclusive environment. So we tend to be the first um teachers
068that the students are introduced to when they arrive to the building. We like to consider it a holistic approach. We have um an opportunity to meet and speak with the parents and interview the child. Typically um the records of the student do not always come with them when they enter into the district. So it's crucial that we have this opportunity to speak with the parents, see if they're a student that has a lapse in any type of education and how strong they are in their home language. Um, we find that this is a great opportunity also to show our families how to access our website, Google Classroom, right? The basic necessities that we take for granted. This is the first time that many of them are seeing this. Um, we like to create clear and
069open lines of communication. We make sure that, you know, after the first day we check in with them, we check in with them at the end of the week. And establishing those relationships really help make those students successful in the long run. When we get a new student, we have a peer buddy system. The students are very excited to um share, you know, their knowledge of the building and their teachers and where the lunchroom is. So, um these students, they they'll come to Jess and I in the morning and say, "We hear we have a new student. Can I be the peer buddy?" So it's really great that um we are able to give this we try to match them up based on you know their grade level the country of origin so they have
070some initial things in common before you know entering just the classroom. We recently went and did an inter visitation to the three buildings and um we followed students in their curriculum classes and then we were able to interview them. Every student that we spoke to said that they feel welcome, they feel safe, they feel, you know, like they are successful in what they're doing in school. Um the elementary school started a newcomer club on Fridays in first period. They all sit and have breakfast together and um it's really turned into a big club that the kids just love to go and hang out and support, talk to one another. They're able to talk in their home language. they're able to practice their English and play games and get to know each other better. So, in
071our curriculum and providing enriching learning experiences for goal number two, um we offer as the district 15% of the ENLCTE hours are done inhouse. So, a lot of the professional development and workshops that Jessica and I go to and attend, we tend to turnkey to the staff, um, one that we recently attended was motivating the unmotivated, which really can apply to any student despite, you know, type of learner they are. Um, we uh at superintendence conference day had a presentation about just create um supporting the students holistically. We offered workshops. We offered like office hours where we were able to sit with the teachers and really look at their curriculum and look at the work that they were doing and seeing how we can be better help them scaffold that. We have created and you'll
072see that in like the next couple of pages, we created a district-wide differentiation guide. So we looked at the language acquisition levels and looking in a way that we could help not just the student but the teachers and how to you know easily differentiate the work and any type of assessment that they have for it. Um all the data that we share as a department is colorcoded the way that you see it. Right? So every language acquisition has its own color. Um, and it really just coincides with um meeting the students with where they're at as opposed to, you know, giving them a little bit of a higher expectation of, you know, what we where we want them to grow and see that we can grow. I jump in for a second. Yeah. Just and
073just to add to that, um, Megan and I both had experience with um, being instructional coaches and teaching teachers. So it was really nice that we were able to take a lot of that information and work together to provide professional development and yeah we did two professional developments in the middle school and then we also did a professional development this year in the high school. So we are providing that CTLE service you know um to the teachers already like that's something that we have in district that can now be provided. Um so the we have we um added some examples of what this differentiation could look like. Um this is a study guide from 8th grade where um we frontload the vocabulary. The way that you know you differentiate it could be different based on
074the language acquisition level. So our entering and emerging students might just have the word and an image. Then as they progress to transitioning we might include a sentence. So um this is just like a great way that they could go back and study with their big question and any type of vocabulary that is there. We tend to have a uh three rule model when it comes to different differentiating our texts. We provide you know the work with the student to the student in their home language right but not always the student is not at that grade level in their home language that we would expect them to be at. So we I take the home language text and we could chunk it down and change the grade level of it. Then we have our I'll
075skip to the top one, the standard, right? The grade level work. And then we try to do something that meets the learner in between. And this kind of differentiation doesn't always just apply to our ENL students. It could apply to any student that is struggling. Right. Just to add to that, like we do a lot of collaboration with our special education teachers as well. So, a lot of the resources that we'll create um because our goal is to teach the students English, right? So, a lot of the resources that we're creating are going to be meeting all types of learners. So, um I was just thinking about your question before like how do you meet the the learners where they are? So we really try and create this resource whenever they're exposed to different types
076of text where we can you know give them a couple of different options and now we have you know there's so many wonderful resources out there. Diffit is an incredible resource that we use which you can put in a text and then you can put in a grading like a reading level of what would be appropriate for the students and then we can adjust the questions accordingly. So all students are always exposed to the same information, you know, it's just we might give the text in a different type of way. Oh, and then I'm excited about this. Sorry. So, um, this is another way that we're providing some great experiences. Um, and for those of you who have had students in the seventh grade, you know that Mr. Schoberg every year loves to do the
077local history project. So, the local history project is when the students go out and then they have to find historical markers, like a historical landmark. And uh we found that a lot of our English language learners were like, "We're not really sure where they are and what to do." There are a few in town, but they're not as interesting as the ones that are a little bit further. So, we started doing some trips where we taught them about Cibil Letington, and we taught them I'm so excited about Cibil Letington. So, and we taught them about all different um you know, pieces of history that that happened here in Pauling and it's created this beautiful conversation. And so, it's just again another way of making this information, making these projects more accessible to our students. Okay,
078which brings us to goal number three, engaging our community. Um we've done a lot of work this year with engaging our community and so has Mr. Marmallejo. Um so, what does this look like? Well, in the elementary school, we have um the community dia de la familia, which is a day that um that they do in the beginning of the year, and they invite it's usually like in August, they invite all of the families to come and get to know the the community, get to know each other. There's music, there's dancing, there's all kinds of fun activities. And then they also teach them about, you know, what the schedule is going to look like and just getting the kids ready for school. And um in the middle school we have the lead club um that
079I'm the adviser for and this has become like a great success. It was really student centered. The students wanted to create some kind of like English teaching club and so um you know of course it was part of that our 20 time init coming up with these great ideas every year. So uh we created an English style club. We call it the lead club. So it's the Latinos empowerment and development and um the students create all kinds of different events and activities. So this year we did a um celebration of immigrants ice cream social where all of the students came together and we looked at all the immigrants in our community and celebrated them from all different countries. Um we also have a partnership with the Pauling Library where the kids go and they get
080different books and then they create some kind of book club. Um we've worked with um also Camino Exido which has a great partnership with the high school. And this year actually just on August on April 26th we went to the um Latin X leadership conference in Nurishelle and um and the kids just learned about you know again being leaders and the amazing things that they can do and just thinking about their career and college readiness. So this is just a little bit of the pictures of all of the wonderful events. You want to add anything in here? So, um, these are pictures of the, um, breakfast club that they have on Fridays, the newcomer club. So, they're really, you know, they they have some of the kids on pajama day right before Christmas. One of
081the um, standalone units that they work on is community in the elementary school. So, the students, you know, have pictures of what their community looked like. They had to create their own town with the different buildings of what they normally see around. Here are middle school students. Um we have pictures from the conference that they went to a few weeks ago. And up on the right hand side we took them to sing with the seniors right before Christmas which was really fun. Um they sang songs in both English and in Spanish holiday songs to the seniors and the seniors I think loved it more than the kids did. Right. It was so cool and it's great because it's wonderful for language development because they're learning different songs in English so they're taking risks um and
082and it's really it's in a fun and uh you know casual Exactly. casual environment. Um these are just a couple more pictures of them um participating. We had our Hispanic Heritage celebration in October which was incredible. The kids brought in all different foods and we had, you know, a celebration. The best thing about it now is that everyone's getting involved. It's not just really like our Hispanic community, but it's the whole school really is starting to get excited about coming to these different events. So, um, what else? Oh, and then the high school. So to bring us to the high school um this year there was a wonderful project um which was reunifying all immigrants in zones of Hispanic heritage where we had our English language learners go and present and talk about immigrant rights
083and they went and do you want to say a little something? I know. Yeah. Yeah. Um just Yeah. Wait a second. Hi Mr. Marlejo. I'm the ENL teacher from the high school. Um this year we have we were very lucky to take the students uh to the boys's program. It's called the student innovation program. Um all the native speakers at the last minute decided not to attend. So I stepped in I say okay I can bring my kids and this will be a great way to take I always think that when knowledge is set in the classroom is doomed to perish and one of the initiatives that we have here in Poland is to bring that knowledge out of the classroom and take it out into the community. this was the perfect opportunity because we
084always talk about activism uh how to advocate for other for taking lesson. So this was actually a way to put all that that they learn in class into practice. So we took four students and they got to present and I think it was very well liked. Yeah. Thank you so much Miss Marlejo. So yeah, just to wrap it up and it's so nice that ENL and math are here together today because um something that we're really excited about is our English language learners now. We're really trying to get them and encourage them to to join the algebra program. So we have right now one of our English language learners is he's the first one who is in the eighth grade who's going into the algebra program. He took it and then we just had out
085of our seventh graders, we now have rising kids now going into algebra. So this is we're creating this pipeline now of AP courses of you know really showing what you know and celebrating it and using your bilingualism as a strength and not a detriment. So thank you so much for having us. Any questions? Thank you very much. I'll see if any board members have any questions. No questions. It's just uh it's wildly apparent to everyone up here on the deis and everyone that was in the crowd earlier this evening. uh the level of compassion that everyone here has when they present and how excited everyone is for all the different things that are going on in the classroom. So, thank you. Thank you so much. I just had a quick question. You were talking about
086sort of the difference between entering and emerging and transitioning and the different supports you provided. So, I think you said when they get the when they get to transitioning, that's when they're no longer in a standalone class. So, you mentioned that you um push into their ELA classes. Do you do anything with their other content areas? So, what we've done in previous years is if they're really struggling, we will adapt our schedules to provide some part, you know, um support, but usually it's just one class. That's like the state mandate is just one pushing into one class. So, that's the ELA, but um something that we've created was the ENL academic lab. And so, our expanding and our transitioning students get and our commanding Right. Exactly. are getting extra support because social studies and science
087are really challenging and there's so much content in there. So that's something that we've been really aware of. I just want to add something in the high school. We do provide a lot of support especially all the content area classes. I'm in US history class. I'm in all the LA classes. Um I think we perform miracles because I'm the only ENL teacher in the high school. uh fortunately we have now two TAs but even though we don't have a big number of students because in different grade levels that multiplies exponentially so being in every single class is very difficult but uh Mrs. Scalan does a great work uh job trying to schedule every year so we can maximize and reach every single student and one more thing that I wanted to add is that and
088I always tell Mrs. talent. We do perform miracles in the high school because when they come to us to learn a second language, it takes seven years. When they come to us in high school, we have it for three years if we're lucky. So, in three years, we had to make sure they learn the content, they learn English, and they pass the regions. And I'm very happy to say that our students in the high school are graduating with a reg diploma. Okay. Thanks, Mark. Thank you very much. Of course. All right. Have a great night, guys. Thank you. Just real quick, I meant to say this earlier, but happy teacher appreciation week. Uh, next up, we're going to uh invite Miss Kica to give her administrative report on food services. Thank you also for your
089patience tonight. I only have one little page of notes, so I promise to be brief. I know it's been a long night and you still have more to get through. Um, so my admin report um is a few weeks old now. So I do have um some updates that you might have not read back in April um from the written report. Uh since then the New York State budget has um been finalized and I was really happy to see that the free meals for all students in New York State was included in the budget. So what that means for Pauling is even though we are enrolled in the community eligibility provision which provides free meals to 100% of our students regardless of their qualifications individually um it means that if our polling community happens to
090fall below that 25% threshold that in initially qualified us for the C program um the state subsidy will now cover that up to 0%. So even if we had no children that qualified we don't have to meet that threshold. The only change um that could prevent us from continuing this program would be if there were federal uh USDA changes to the federal side of the program and then if the state subsidy could not cover um those changes to the USDA. So right now it's funded by both the USDA and New York State. So obviously there's there's a balance between the two. So I am hopeful. I did um attend a conference in Albany in February to discuss with our local representatives why it was so important for them to keep this in the budget. And
091at that conference, I found out that they actually inflated the amount of the budget in case there are federal changes to the percentage um that the USDA will cover financially. It's just hard to say um how much that will cover if the changes do happen. So, we have our fingers crossed that we'll still be able to continue this for many years to come. Um, I think it goes without saying when we offer free meals to all students, you can see it in the participation um growth that I send you every report how many more students are um taking advantage of our school meals simply because well because we offer fabulous food. But um aside from that, the stigma is absolutely removed from those who need um school meals provided from those who just want to
092enjoy it. So it's it's a great program and I'm really happy that Pauling has been able to participate and will continue to participate. Um this school year is winding down, so we have summer meals to start thinking about. Um, this year we're hosting our summer programs and our summer food service program at the high school, which I am thrilled about because that location qualifies as an open site, which means it's easier for us to be approved. We can open it to um any of our community members who are 18 and under that want to come stop by and have a meal, breakfast, lunch, both with us on every day that we're in session. We'll be able to also feed those students. So, it's not just students that are um enrolled in our summer programs, which
093is really exciting. Um I am meeting with um our summer administrators uh in a couple of weeks to figure out those logistics and how to best serve both the community and our enrolled students during July and August. So, it will be an exciting summer this year. Um I have submitted some purchase orders for a few small equipment purchases, um supply and equipment. Uh we are finally going to replace the old vending beverage machine that was here that was provided to us um through our distributor. So it wasn't actually a machine that we ever purchased or rented. It is always just provided and we are linked to only putting in um beverages that we purchase from that specific distributor. So, we've finally after months of that not working and things not going well, that has been
094picked up and we have a new beverage machine. Um, it's exactly the same as the beverage machine that we purchased in the beginning of the year for the high school. We purchased the same machine knowing how well it's working uh for the middle school. So, that will provide um bottled water, our 100% juices um and any other beverages that are approved with the smart snack USDA regulations. Um, our students here have been missing the bottled water outside of lunch and breakfast time. So, I'm really excited that that will be offered. I know we have after school programs. I know we're here tonight, so if we have bottled water in our vending machine, it's just a nice service to be able to provide. Uh, we are also uh replacing an extremely old prep table at our
095high school. Um, this prep table had a sink in it at one point that has been welded over. So, we're finally um in a financial situation where we we have um a fund balance to use. And thankfully, the purchase of our walk-in freezer and cooler that's going into the elementary school um this summer came um under what we had originally budgeted for. So, there was, you know, a little bit of money left over in our fund balance. So, to make these small purchases um a little bit easier. So, we'll be replacing that. So, it's a nice clean even surface. It promotes a healthy food safe working area for our staff. Um, in our participation, I was really excited to see a milestone that we hit in March. We um broke the threshold for 700 meals
096in a day. We served 702 meals on a day in March. So, that's really exciting to see that even after a few years of free meals for all and all the wonderful things that we're doing through harvest of the month and our global menu that students and new students are still um coming to our lunch lines and and and buying a meal after, you know, so much time. It's it's nice to see the growth continue from day to day. Um, our global menu for last month was something a little different and I was really pleased to see how wellreceived it was by our secondary students um, in collaboration with the middle school heritage club. It was the ArabAmerican Heritage uh, recognition celebration last month. So, we did a Zatar roasted wing and the kids are
097really loving the actual traditional wings with the bones in them rather than a boneless wing. So we served those and we made a couscous with finely diced and roasted vegetables that were seasoned um traditionally for for that region and it was really wellreceived and the students really enjoyed it. So it was it was nice uh to see. Um and just to give you a recap on the health and wellness committee since this is the last time I'll be in front of you this school year. Um we met four times virtually this school year. Um our committee is made up of administrators, teachers, uh community members, parents, and we have a middle school student who attends every meeting and is really passionate about uh what we do here in Pauling schools. So I always welcome new
098students and new community members and staff to join us. Um, so we'll be soliciting for that and everybody will see those emails going out um at the beginning of next school year for anybody that wants to participate and uh contribute to the wellness of our of our students and staff. Uh we just wrapped up Snack Aruza last month. That's our healthy snack program at the elementary school. Um the elementary PTA came in and helped deliver all of our snacks to the classroom. It's an event that I wouldn't be able to do without their help. So, I'm very grateful that they're always on board to uh to help out with that. We um featured zucchini uh for our harvest of the month vegetables. So, we had a zucchini salad that we made completely allergen um friendly.
099So, we didn't it was a pesto dressing on our salad that we cut into ribbons and we didn't use any parmesan cheese or clearly no nuts in our pesto. So, we made that with some nutritional yeast. Um, so it was gluten-free, it was dairy free, it was egg free, it was nut free, and it was, you know, fun for everybody to try. We had a baked zucchini fry, and we also had allergen-friendly alternatives for that, as well as, uh, the zucchini bread, which was clearly the favorite because the baked sweet good is always the favorite. Um, I personally loved the salad the most. Um, we have our walk before school scheduled for March 20 or March. We're not going backwards. We're going to go forwards into May. In May 29th, we're going to have our
100walk before school at the elementary. And once again, I've um asked the PTA to come and help me out. It's one of my favorite events to just see the kids walking around. We blow up balloons. We have some music playing, and it's it's a really great event to promote the physical activity side of what what health and wellness is all about. So, I'm really looking forward to that. Um, and then for next year, I just wanted to wrap up by letting you know that my focus will be on our new digital menu that we're going to purchase for the upcoming school year. It'll be a web-based um menu that as we progress through the program, we'll be able to load our recipes in there with all of our nutritional content so that there's a little
101bit more transparency for the community and the students to see exactly what types of foods we're serving. I know it'll be a big help to our nurses if they're managing any um students nutritional needs throughout the school days. Um, while they do have access to all of that, this will certainly be um a more uh organized hub for them to be able to see each daily choice and just be able to hover the mouse over whatever uh menu item that student consumed and they'll be able to see the carbs and the the fats and the calories and all of those good things. I plan to take a lot of pictures next year of foods and so the actual food photo of the meal that we're actually serving and not just a stock photo will appear
102when you when you look at those menu items. So, I'm really excited. As much of a big undertaking as it will be, it will be well worth it in the end. So, that wraps up what we've been doing so far this school year. I'd love to answer any questions if you have them. Thank you very much. I always appreciate your enthusiasm. Does anybody have any questions? do just one uh the meals uh during the high school during the summer uh at the high school. Is that is this the first year we're doing something like that or is it generally done every during co we during uh those kind of allowances we had some some leeway to open up but we also had several sites throughout the uh demographics that we delivered meals to. So, it's
103a bit different where our actual building will be open. All right. Thank you. I was just curious what the meal was that broke records. It was our pizza sticks. So, the kids know it's it's next Friday or No, it's this Friday again. And they've really been loving the pizza sticks. They are really delicious with our homemade tomato sauce though. We do make that from scratch. So, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Thank you very much. This evening we're up to agenda order. Are the Is there an addendum, Miss Jenner Roso? Yes, there is an addendum. Um on the addendum, we have a uh I've added the board minutes from the Friday, May 2nd meeting. We have an appointment of a Spanish teacher, an occupational therapist, uh interim district clerk.
104We are amending a registered nurse and we have some leave of absences, a physical education teacher, a special education teacher and under financial we have um acknowledged the claim auditor's report. I have one item that will be removed from the consent agenda. It's board of education and it is item number one, the appointment of election inspectors. Get there. I'll explain what's going on. Resolve to approve the following deletions, additions, and changes in order of the agenda as presented. The items with an asterisk are items the superintendent recommends for the consent agenda. If any board member wishes to remove an item from the consent agenda, please do so at this time. The consent agenda is one vote which approves all aster items which have not previously been removed. Does any board member have any item they
105would like removed or a question on any item? Okay. Um then can I get a motion? Mr. Garberino. Second. Second. Mr. Maine. All in favor? I think that's unanimous. All right. Now we are going to move on to um our first set of visitor comments which are on agenda items only. So, I'm just going to real quick remind everybody, okay, um that we welcome visitors and we are happy to hear your comments. Remember that um comments should be addressed to the board president or in this case myself. Remember that we are here to listen. We might not necessarily respond to you tonight, but if there is something that requires response, we will get back to you. Um everyone does have a 3minut time limit. Remember, please not to mention any names um for confidentiality reasons.
106And I think we have Mr. Makovsky speaking about curriculum. And Harvey Matovsky um resident of Holmes, New York. Um I I you know um coming here and speaking um was not a chore because um I I I learned a lot and um I think um more parents ought to take advantage of this and more citizens rather than sitting at home and and and typing nonsense on on their social media that learn a hell of a lot of what's going on in this school regarding the English learners and the math and and and and the the food um um service. Um you know, a lot of rumors would be dispelled, but hey, it's it's let's start a rumor. Who wants the truth? Um but so um I I totally appreciated it. Um I I mean I
107I words um that are more important diversity, respect. I heard a word empathy. Boy, is that an important word, empathy, with those that are different. It it it it this is a diverse world and um our job is to is to educate our kids to send them out in this diverse world where they're going to meet a lot of people that um they they would never ever have a chance to and it's our job to send them out that way. Um if he believed in social media, you would think the major major issue funding uh of um the future of of of the school district was the imaginary boys playing with girls in girls sports or boys using girls bathrooms. I mean this this nonsense. Um you you would think that parents um were unaware
108of the age appropriate discussion of gender uh uh um that's part of the curriculum curriculum. You would think that there's some conspiracy by the administration and the state of New York to indoctrinate their kids. Um um what what what what's this mystery? I I I don't get it because it's not true. Um the the the the fact is that these curriculum issues uh um um could could be observed and are available to all parents um if they have any questions about it. They think it's not it's not appropriate or the kids are coming home. The all the years that I was on the school board, you could come to any of the principles. You could come to the assistant for principles. You could come to the superintendent and their doors are always open. but they'd
109rather complain and be ignorant. Well, that's their choice and it's all harmful to their students and the education that's available in this wonderful uh um district of ours. And um okay, and again, we we're here to educate our kids and prepared to send them out in this wonderful diverse society. And I'll leave you with one thought, empathy. Thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you. All right, we do uh board vice president comments, which I do have a few. Um, so there is a lot going on this time of year. It's actually really hard to keep up. I feel like Board remarks first. Oh jeez, I'm sorry. Board remarks. Does anybody have any comments? Sorry about that. Um, busy time of year. So, I want to uh wish good luck to all of
110our high school students taking AP tests over the next two weeks. Our elementary and middle school students completed their first round of state testing last week. Um, I can personally speak to the fact that our second graders had a great trip to the Ridgefield Playhouse yesterday. Um, and our 9th graders had a lot of fun at the Planetarium in Bridgeport two weeks ago. I want to thank all the staff who have worked hard to prepare for the eighth grade DC trip which is making its return this year. I want to thank Mr. Easter and Miss Nace and all the staff who supported our fifth and sixth grade chorus and our sixth grade band in their trip to perform at the Renegades game last week. I know they all had a great time. Um I want
111to thank Mr. Easter again and Mr. Gray who took our seventh and eighth grade band and chorus and the high school band and chorus to Six Flags on Saturday. Um and like Miss Saraphini said that was like a 17-hour day. Um, and we had a lot of dedicated parent chaperones as well as our awesome transportation staff who gave a lot of time for the kids to have a great day and also show off our music programs. Um, at the last meeting I didn't mention and I know you'd all be waiting to know um that our spring inter murals program kicked off. And this is something really wonderful that we have. Uh, you may know or not know, but that in New York State middle school sports don't start until 7th grade. That's modified sports. So
112now we have an afterchool program for fifth and sixth graders in the spring to come and participate in sports. Um, my children wait for it all year. So, I'm very grateful to Mr. Grippo for all the work he puts in to find sports that they want to do. They make a plan, they make a calendar, they figure out what they're going to play each day. Um, so it's really wonderful. In community partner news, I want to thank the PTSA for the amazing job they did hosting the pre-promos at Lakeside. Um, this event started as CO was ending when everybody was really trying to build community. Um, and is a labor of love. It's a tremendous amount of work. Um, but it's really wonderful to see. It's such a welcoming evening where all families and all
113students come together. Um they had really nice weather and I really want to thank them. The PTA and the PTSA are both hard at work this week to celebrate teacher appreciation week. Again, many volunteers put in countless hours of their time um to to help support our staff. You heard Miss Kica say how many times she calls on the PTA to help. Both groups are also hosting the highly anticipated Wizards game next Thursday along with the student council and Tiger Club. Um, the PTA has taken the lead on the May 31st color run at Lakeside Park. This is another really fun event for all families. And our Tiger Club is hosting a cornhole tournament in June to help support all of their efforts, which includes snack bags for all away games. They help provide funds
114for senior night for each team, which again I can personally speak to being very helpful. And they will be providing senior scholarships. Speaking of sports, it has been a really rainy season for our athletes, but they are making the best of it. Our girls lacrosse team is six and two on the season and they have a couple games this week and their senior game is this Saturday at home at 11 right on our turf. Uh the boys lacrosse team played last night in the pouring rain. They have two more games this week um Friday uh and Thursday and their senior night is Monday evening at home. Um I spoke to their coach and he told me that they're four and four on the season and they have mostly ninth and tth graders. That's really impressive
115and I think we've seen that this year on some of our other teams, but when we have these young teams that are already doing well, uh it's a lot for us to look forward to. Pauling golf is hoping to get their match in tomorrow at Centennial. Boys baseball had a big win last Thursday against Luff and they're really just uh waiting for the fields to dry up. Girls softball is also in a similar boat with field conditions. They have their senior night next Thursday at the elementary school field. The varsity track and field team competed in the rain on Saturday in Sr's. Last night they were in Putt Valley for the league championships. Uh we had many strong performances in PRs and we have league champs in the girls 1500 and 3000, the girls long
116jump and triple jump and the boys shot put as well as a lot of second and third place finishes. And just remember the sports calendar is on the website and especially with all the weather, make sure you are checking it. Have a great week. Um now I'm going to move to superintendent's comments. Thank you Dr. Walsh. As usual, I'll try not to repeat too much um things that you've already said, but I a couple things maybe um benefit from repetition because they're so special. I want to thank Acme Markets for their uh for tripling their donation of gift cards for families experiencing food insecurity this year. Last year they provided us with $1,000 of gift cards and this year they provided us with 3,000. Um I don't know whether it was the nice thank you
117notes or the acknowledgement on the board agenda, but I was very glad to get the extra money. Um we're grateful and we've written to both the local um our local market and also the national program to say thank you. And I also want to thank Mrs. Morales Kelly for helping to administer this program so that the the money goes to families um who need it um and the access to food. We have um so zooming out from Pauling to Albany, we have the 11th budget extension um currently and um based on my call this morning as part of the lower Hudson Education Coalition uh those that are reading um those the the prognosticators are hoping that we will have a finalized budget by Saturday. So that's that's our current best bet. Um, as has already
118been acknowledged, this is teacher appreciation week. And I'd like to begin by thanking our students and families for those special notes that teachers get this time of year. And also especially to our PTA and PTSA partners for making this week a really special tribute to our Pauling teachers. Our teachers here in Pauling always get high marks uh wherever I go, wherever I'm listening um from families, from supervisors and students and visitors alike, people who come and see our district for their commitment and care for their students. That's an almost universal sentiment towards Pauling teachers. And um I just um echo that and uh I know that I speak for the entire community when I say that we are very grateful to them. As Dr. Walsh mentioned, this past weekend was music in the parks uh
119music in the parks event and our secondary music teachers uh Mr. Gray, Mrs. Nace, and Mr. Easter led a remarkable team of musicians through the process of adjudication and of course their excellent musicianship was rewarded. um sincere thanks to not only our teachers and um our students but also the parents for all the years of support that get rewarded at moments like this and also for chaperoning a 17-hour bus trip. Um I want to thank our third grade math students tonight and our curriculum leaders uh for their excellent presentations as well as Dr. Kirkus for supporting their work all year long. And I'd like to thank Mrs. Teslan for her work throughout the year to support our present and future school programs with sound fiscal planning now and into the future. Those are my remarks.
120Okay. Thank you. We are now up to the consent agenda. Resolve that the board of education approves all asterisk items as the consent agenda. Do I have a motion? Mr. Graphic. Second. Second. Mr. Maine. All in favor? I. All right. All right, we're going to move on to minutes. We do have three uh different minutes to approve. Resolve that the board of education approve the minutes of the following meeting. The business meeting of Tuesday, April 22nd. Do I have a motion? Spiel second. Mr. Garbarino. All in favor? I I'm trying to figure out if that was the one that I missed. If I need to abstain from that technically. One moment, please. 22nd. I was here. Yeah. Sorry. Just wanted to make sure. Right. resolve that the board of education approve the minutes of the
121following meeting the special board of education meeting on Wednesday April 30th do I have a motion second Mr. Garbarino all in favor I uh resolve that the board of education approve the minutes of the following meeting special board of education meeting Friday May 2nd do I have a motion second Mr. Gratic. All in favor? I page eight. That's policy. Uh, no. The first thing we're going to do is the uh correction of um the election inspectors. Okay. Um it's basically what happened was is I didn't realize that the minimum wage went from $50 to 1550. So to resolution to change the resolution that's there to appoint them. So resolve that the board of education approve the change of the hourly rate of $15 to per hour to comply with the minimum wage. Repeat that. No,
122I just need Okay. Can I get a motion? Mr. Graphic. Second. Second. Mr. Maine. All in favor? I. That's unanimous. Um, I just need us to then do the new uh resolution to approve the inspectors with the new rate. Call that the board of education approve the appointed appointment of the elected inspectors. Do I have a motion? Miss Bogle second. Miss Kazaka. All in favor? Now we're down to the policy. Now you are. Okay. So, we have the first reading of the policy on extreme heat condition days. Mr. Garberino, can you kind of give us an update, please, from your meeting? Sure. Thank Um, so, uh, in order to be in compliance with new state regulations on extreme heat conditions in schools, we are adopting a a new policy on extreme heat conditions. So, essentially
123the way this works is that they're laying out two thresholds for temperature, one at 82 degrees and one at 88 degrees required to um make accommodations in educational spaces. Um, so if the temperature is reaching 82 degrees, um, and before I get to that, they they the policy describes how the temperature should be measured, uh, 3 ft above the floor near the center of the room for the the purposes of these determinations. Um, but if the temperature is reaching 82°, uh, there are some, uh, steps to be taken to mitigate that to, uh, attempt to keep them from reaching that higher level. Um, and those include turning off overhead lights, pulling down shades or blinds, turning on fans, opening windows, turning off unused electronics, and providing water brakes. And, uh, you know, th those are
124put into place to try to keep the temperature from getting higher than that. Um, some some spaces might have to be airond conditioned, uh, you know, before reaching the temperature to comply with students uh, IEP or 504 plans. And uh if the temperature reach 82 degrees, I'm sorry, 88 degrees, then um principles will have to evacuate those educational spaces and move students to cooler places. Um or perhaps if it's a more extensive problem, consider uh sending students and staff home. And in terms of exam times, if temperature reaches 88 degrees, students would have to be uh moved to different spaces and testing could resume uh when it was safe to do so. And the policy also lays out that uh the board will consider uh extreme heat condition days when adopting uh school calendar. It's
125a required policy by according with state law and our version is very similar to the NISBA policy that we we looked at. Does anybody have any questions or comments? I'd only like to comment that we expect to be in a fully airond conditioned campus by a year from now. That would took the words right out of my mouth. And then the other thing I wanted to mention as well, Dr. Fant Fontana, when we were reviewing this policy uh last week, you made it uh we discussed the fact that really before this policy came to us uh from the new legislation, we'd already kind of been doing these things uh like the preemptive stuff as well in the classroom for the children in terms of trying to keep things cool. Okay. So, we can um either
126move it to second reading or if everybody is okay, we can approve it tonight. Correct? You can wave the second reading and approve it tonight. not approving it tonight. You want to do that? Everybody's okay with it. All right. From from the policy committee, I mean, I know I'm I'm okay with it. I I reread it after that evening. So, yeah, as Guido said, the the policy is very much in line with the NISBA sample and it's pretty much right in accordance with the new regulation. So, I'd be all right to second reading or right to adoption. And this this was the language that Mr. Green was okay with at the end, right? That was I want to make sure that resolution would be resolved to wave the second reading of the extreme heat condition
127days policy and move to second. Can we get a motion? Motion a second. Second, Mr. Gratchic. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Now we are moving on to unfinished business. We do have the um runoff election vote for Boseies. Right. This is a run-off vote for one seat to fill a vacancy with the term beginning April 23rd, 2025 and ending June 30th, 2026 on the board of cooperate educational services. Cooperative educational services. The trustees are board of education of each component school district by resolution may cast one vote for the vacancy. So there are two candidates, Mark Fleshower and Bryce Holland. So we can yeah just a show of hands for which candidate. Okay. So uh all in favor of Mark Flehower raise your hand please. So three and then all in favor of Bryce Holland.
128Okay we have three. Can we send a tie? Okay. Perfect. That all you need for that? Oh, no. We have to No, then I need you to just do the resolution. Okay. Be it resolved that the board of education of the polling central school district hereby cast its vote uh for Mark Flecher and Bryce Holland uh three votes each in the Bosey's 2025 runoff election with the term beginning on May 7th 2025 and ending June 30th 2026. Can I get a motion? Mr. Miss Kazaka motion second. Mr. Garberino second. All in favor? I I Okay, next up is the interim superintendent search. Um, so I really want to thank all of our uh board members for all the time, effort, and thoughtfulness they've been putting into this process. Um, you know, sometimes when districts appoint
129an interim, they just make a couple phone calls and find someone who's available um and and appoint them, and that's uh perfectly fine, but I think that everyone really has gone above and beyond in um you know, reaching out to every candidate we could find. We did screenings, the board met with several candidates. We've had some really um thoughtful and reflective discussion and um we are hopeful that we will be moving forward with the candidate soon. If anybody else wants to share anything, I'm happy to we're happy to hear. I just want to add to to that point that uh multiple times throughout this process we've heard that we're doing above and beyond what most most do in this search like Dr. Walsh stated some schools just reach out say hey are you interested and
130that's the end of that but uh I think all of us really much uh you know value that anybody that's going to lead this district whether it's for a day a month whatever it may be that we want to make sure we get the best person and uh a lot of credit goes to to board leadership Dr. Walsh and and Mr. or um for leading us through a very very thorough and uh and really an exemplar process. So I just want to say thank you guys for that and really everybody deserves credit. Um like Dr. Well said like the discussions the the thoroughess um I don't think a lot of schools are doing that for an interim and I think we did a very nice job and are doing a very nice job and uh
131and again everybody's played a role in that. So, I'm just really happy to be a part of that and I think the community should be happy to know that this process is not being taken lightly and it's being done with a thoroughess that I don't think many schools are doing. So, a lot of credit goes to board leadership and I thank everybody for that thoroughess. So, just wanted to share that else. All right. So, moving on to new business. Anybody have new business? Okay. Um, second visitor comments. We don't have anybody signed up. um board president comments. Obviously, Mr. Ory is not here, but I will just remind everyone um that the board of education budget vote and the election of board of education members will take place on Tuesday, May 20th at the Polling
132Elementary School gym from 7:30 to a.m. to 9:00 p.m. There are three seats available for three-year terms expiring on June 30th, 2028. There's one seat available for a one-year term expiring on June 30th, 2026. Uh if you have any questions, you can reach out to our district clerk. There is a voter registration being held on May 8th at the Paulie Elementary School Library from 3:45 to 7:45. If you are interested in doing that, you need to bring the appropriate documents with you. Uh to make sure that you can register if you have not voted in any election in the last four years, you should check with the Duchess County Board of Elections to make sure you are still registered to vote. Okay. Um I guess with that we can adjourn the meeting. So resolve that
133the board of education adjourn this meeting. The time is 9:11. Do I have a motion? Motion. Mr. Maine. Second. Miss Pilogel. All in favor? I. Thank you everybody. Have a good night.