001good evening and Welcome to our Pittsford Central school district school board meeting I would like to welcome you all and ask you to join us in saying the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you may I have a motion for approval of the agenda thank you um all in favor un opposed the motion carries thank you next we are delighted to hear from um Mr Josh Walker from ckins Road Middle School our principal there thank you everyone right thank you it's nice to see most of you again uh after last week's tour um welcome to Mike FY here with me as well as we get uh
002ready to just share a little State of the State or state of the school with you um we uh going to focus on a couple of things here tonight um going to go through some just quick updates around security our instructional support team and our coun cing Suite all of the theme throughout the four items that we're talking to you tonight is about student responsiveness and hearing the student voice something we've really been focusing on um and you'll see pieces of that uh in all of these things so with that I'm going to turn it over to Mike thanks Josh and thank you school board for welcoming us here um I want to share that I've experienced a milestone in my life and that is I've noticed my glasses are no longer working working so
003I've been here long enough to now have a prescription change so I I want to thank you for um the faith you've shown in us with the kids and it's been an absolute Delight to work here and I'm very honored and humbled to be here um I'm going to talk to you about Safety and Security um one of the things we've been able to do thanks to the the project was uh creating a single point of entry uh within our school this is important because it really helps us control the flow of traffic coming in and out of the office we know who's coming in we know who's coming out we can vet them more easily and it also allows I think for a more productive uh office environment instead of having kids coming in
004and out looking for their lunches looking for you know whatever item that's been dropped off now a separate area they can do that and I think it's been very con uh convenient for parents too to be able to drop that off sign sign in and take off um so it's been really great that way um we've also did done a a lot with our parking lot traffic flow and what this involves is now you have one single route that goes around the loop we started this really in Earnest last year and I think we've almost got it down uh where everybody knows what we're trying to do and the good news about that is if if people follow the route the kids are always dropped off where they're not going to have to encounter any
005kind of traffic that's coming through and unfortunately sometimes people are in a hurry whatever ice you name it this avoids a lot of those dangers so we thank the community for uh coopera with us sometimes a pain to have to wait through that but we seem to have the line moving pretty quick so that's another great thing that we've seen also in conjunction with the district's um sort of planning around uh if we ever have to do reunifications we've um kind of redid some of our fire drill uh protocols to include hey what would you do if if there was a fire drill before after school or even during passing time and making sure we have a way to to take attendance and really be accountable during those sort of non-traditional times uh that will
006be rolling out in the spring so a lot with Safety and Security we've we've worked on and uh I think it's going to pay off anything okay our instructional support team also had a bit of a uh facelift if you will uh with the idea of uh removing red tape removing barriers for teachers to get help to kids as fast as possible uh so what that means is in the past if let's say you wanted a kid in math AIS or reading support um there would be a you'd have to wait for a meeting to take place that could take a month right rather than doing that what we said look let's put the experts in charge of this let the Math teachers talk with the Math teachers and the service providers they know what
007the kids need best and streamline the process and let them manage the resources that we have so we've been able to do that in science math and reading support and it seems to be working out very well it also focuses our IST team uh to hey let's brainstorm teaching ideas and how to better instruct and not have to worry about hey we got to go through this process to get the kids the help they need so I think that's been another um pretty good good shift um our structured study hall intake process again I hope you hear a theme of sort of customization and and making it easier for communication to happen between the instructors uh faster so in this case with our structured study hall there's now an intake form that goes from the
008counselors and the team teachers to our structured study hall um individual who can then know exactly what to work on with the kids um it's a little bit more customized and it also allows that individual when they send out a weekly email with an update on the kids to kind of customize that to what the teachers are looking for our counseling suite and again another area where um we've seen some physical changes to better just um serve the needs of the kids and the teachers as they're coming in we reconfigured the space so that um if you'd ever visited our school during lunch sometimes it looked a little bit chaotic you had kids all over kind of just they wanted a place to eat lunch now there's a little bit more dedicated areas for that
009to happen um the counseling office has also done a great job of like I don't know how to put it other than say like an openhouse theme so an example of that where we invite the kids and teachers to come down to the counseling office not because they need support but just because it's a ni place to visit for example our service dog had a birthday party and several of the teachers bought their classrooms down just for a little little celebration we sang Happy Birthday to the dog and it was great yeah it was fantastic yep um just along those idea of of social emotional learning for the kids we've begun highlighting for our staff um at faculty meetings just various teachers and just what they're doing on a daily basis to promote social emotional
010learning for example uh I think last month or two months ago we highlighted a teacher who every time I've observed this teacher for 10 years I've seen this consistently and that is let's start class with a this or that so for example today it was jumping jacks or push-ups and the kids just kind of have a brief little fun debate about that we record it on the side of the wall and the kids see over time kind of what the other classes think and it's a nice way to connect things um together we recognize that um teacher with a It's Kind of a Funny Thing a 3D printed Spotlight I don't know what the point of it is other than it's a nice little momentto and they get to take that with them I was
011asked to bring one for you tonight but you know these are these have to be earned they cannot be given away thank you um they are available on eBay if you like um so I'm going to talk a little bit about our Student Life um just in general and going into a focus um you see here this has really been our our our Focus from all of our different uh teacher leaders our department leaders our team leaders our Counseling Group our admin group um is really being responsive to that student voice the key words responsive empowering the student leadership making those connections um middle school is fun it's a tough time but it's fun and it should be learning should be fun the the social piece it it should be fun teaching there is fun
012being an administrator there is fun um we don't want people to forget that that while we work hard and we push ourselves and to grow and and and learn we also should have fun because it is a tough time and an important time in their lives so just to share some things we've talked a little bit about some of these before um and some members of our central Office Team and board have been able to visit like the equa center we we continue to do that trip for the last three years I know Mrs Clayton was there this year and made a friend um and that is something that we did with the eighth grade in the fall um and we hope to continue to do that they've been a wonderful uh partner and what's
013been great is the students give feedback to their team leaders and to Aaron McCrae who really our health teacher who really is the spearhead for this um every year they give feedback and every year it's been different we've had different activities um different things for the students to do and they've really really enjoyed it and the mini Pony uh there I can't remember his name but he was really naughty kept rolling around in the dirt and the kids of course loved it they thought it was great our seventh grade has gone to the S Park Zoo one of the teams is going to do a ropes course this year our sixth grade has the brain Show game show it's like a double air with the sixth grade curriculum they go crazy for it and every
014year um for the past number of years our eighth grade has gone to the JCC to see the Holocaust Survivor play um parallel to their curriculum very impactful um so these grade level experiences and the kids say Yes We Really value that or hey how about some feedback and so far those have been pretty successful spirit days are always a hit here's some from the last month we've got uh Valentine's Day the ever popular anything but a backpack which the kids love cuz they don't bring backpacks so they just think that's fantastic my favorite was the small little shopping carts and of course neon day just some there are no pictures of dress like a student day which was the teachers last week just a lot of hoodies and Crocs so that went well one
015thing that's started this year our library is doing monthly themes and these have been incredibly successful um just opening it up after school for the kids um there was in February there was the middle picture there they did candy heart figures um the one on the left there is the crocheting they thought oh we'll get a handful of kids they had 60 kids show up to crochet my favorite Vision was this one sixth grader getting very frustrated as she was helping four uh eighth graders and not getting the hook and loop or whatever it is like just being very patient and trying to help them we now have a crochet Club that's been approved because it was so popular so if you have yarn please bring it by the other picture is this month they're
016doing a little robot activities I can't remember the name of the robot but uh if you zoom in on that picture the the one student's face it actually moved they got it to move and she was so excited and her face lit up those have been very successful and kids are actually giving suggestions for other things to do but I want Spotlight spirit week cuz this we just finished our spirit week right before February break and it really was representative of what the students were telling us so the student council very active um felt like it was getting a little stale when they wanted to change some things up some of these changes have been occurring over the last couple years but it really came to ahead this year you see their goals there they
017really wanted to get more people involved cuz the uh old pep assemblies used to have a couple of activities ities with a couple kids participating in each one um but they wanted to really be a weeklong thing and they wanted the staff to be involved which is always interesting so this was their plan they utilized their teams I'm a member of their teams it was great the students would come up with ideas they would share them this is where the good of social media they would see things on on uh different platforms of schools doing different activities and put them up there what do you think about this they would debate um the safety of some of them we'll get to that um what theme days they wanted they would talk about the the charitable
018organizations that they wanted to um donate to and they really took the lead during the week doing the announcements leading the pep assembly uh and managing the games you know being the judges of if things worked or not um so we'll just take you through some pictures jar Wars was the fundraising uh throughout the week we competed by grade level they chose the um organization that supports the research on type 1 diabetes this was very important as several of the kids themselves um have type 1 and other family members it was a local organization and something personal the year before they did galanos for a very personal reason it's that connection with the community that the students wanted to make um and over $1,100 in three days of coins lot of counting coins hopefully the
019Penny's gone and we can not worry about that anymore um so pep assembly pictures our choir sang never happened before last year and now they get to be showcased there this picture in particular of a the schoolwide rock paper scissors contest you might notice our sixth grade Champion is related to one of our members of the board against our seventh grade champion who is related to a member of the mend and administration team um no nepotism they won fair and square it was uh pretty great they the every team developed a winner and then they faced off in the assembly again every kid and staff member in the building got to participate I lost mine at 7:36 our day starts at 7:35 it's longer than I made it the year before so at one point
020in our assembly we had four different activities going on you had a ring toss which I don't have the pictures of how long can they keep the beach ball in the air and they would gradually move them farther and farther and farther apart we had a drawing activity they picked a theme and the kids had five minutes to draw and they're still hanging up in our comments the most entertaining thing that happened this year was the mattress race where they had the inflatable mattresses and the students had to run jump on it and get to slide this was tested multiple times fuzzy side down it was a blast in fact we were laughing so hard we forgot to actually have the last Heat because it was so funny the kids enjoyed it they had it's
021so much fun I'm going down and back running jumping on it and getting it to slide um the place was you can see all the staff in the back just laughing hysterically it was wonderful and there's our champion the the moment of champion is Crown there our rock paper scissor Champion uh and we also had hula hoops going on so you had hula hoops drawing beach ball ring toss right after the mattress at no kids did repeat activities so many kids involved about 100 Kids a team each team had about 50 kids involved in the different activities either right at the pep assembly or right before and there they are uh spread out by team color I just think that's a great picture one of the things the students wanted to do was get the
022staff involved so last year there was a a surprise at the end of the pep assembly of a teacher versus teacher dodgeball game it went about as well as you think it was fun but this year we did not do it because we wanted to surprise them and we had had an inflatable race they knew nothing about it we just all ran into the gym got lined up and had a relay race the best part about this watch the kids at the end Garfield clearly does not care so miss Zana from green team wins she cheated green team is going crazy that's why we do it they had a blast this was their feedback student council planned the whole thing and ran the whole thing start to finish and the kids left there the staff
023left there talking about how much fun it was it was as I started it's supposed to be fun and this was great um the kids there was a speech at the beginning from our student council about why they chose the type one um diaby support charity why it was important why the assembly itself was important to all be together um and really rang home that message and it got Mike and I thinking about again our whole purpose we've done so much work here on our mission vision and core values that we pulled out oh I'm really trying not to show that again there we go um our our mission statement I'll let Mike take us up yeah it's it's a lot's changed in 10 years if you think about this hasn't been updated since 2015
024so besides me losing my vision um we also have to I think be responsive to what the new needs of a new generation of kids are and I I I sense a hopefully you're seeing a theme of look we want kids to be in school we want them to have a good time um in order for us to impact kids they've got to be there they want to they have to want to be there and we have to be inclusive of everybody uh and so that's um kind of a a direction we want to go this summer is begin re-up dating our mission statement uh so it's better aligned with our District's vision mission um statements any that's um and we're actually going to be starting this work at superintend conference day in a couple
025of weeks um to lead into the the summer work so with that thank you I always sneak Dwight into every presentation to you but are there any questions or anything that we can uh bring forward for you I say thank you to both abely yes they thank you everyone uh so actually the um District Operations committee so we had in February as um Mr besby said before a school budgeting in the post Foundation Aid and federal covid funds era presented by our very own Mr vby and uh it was really interesting I mean we are lucky here because we have Mike's expertise and some of the information was uh at least familiar but it was interesting to know the history so 2007 Foundation a 2011 that's when we um had the New York uh property
026tax cap and the landscape has changed so much in the world of Education since those things came about and nothing in the in the foundation Aid has has changed so we have more State mandates we have security and safety that we've never had before technology that wasn't around at that time and nothing has been changed to reflect those things so we talked a lot about planning district strategic plan should drive the budget longrange financial plan should shape short andar long-term goals and then some factors we need to consider and of the federal covid funds Foundation Aid is now fully phased in um tax revenue will not keep faced with salary and benefit increases and just how the New York state budget overall um projections indicate a deficit so uh the the kind of bring it
027all together was amidst all of these changes and external factors it's just really important that we keep um working on this collaboratively to address the challenges and communicate often so it was really great I can send the link out to everybody for the presentation it was really good and thanks Mike for sharing with the whole familyy and great attendance at that meeting as well so that just says a lot there um legislative report just really quick we went to Albany last week as has already been mentioned there were 29 of us from across monor County and that includes our superintendant who were there for the ncus um Spring retreat is that correct sure okay um so we had 10 meetings 10 or 11 meetings that day and our Focus as I mentioned before was on
028the zero Mission bus transition and um just a couple action items I wanted to share there are a few things that some of our legislators were looking for for us to follow up on related to um specifics on Mental Health budgetary needs and zero missions buses we know from our area Gates chil is certainly the leader in in that and so a couple of the senators were looking for some specifics to the challenges that they're facing right now with that so we will follow up on that um another thing Emily and I met with Senator helming and she had some questions specific to Foundation Aid so with Mike and Mike's help I was able to send her some information um specific to pittsbur on Foundation Aid so hopefully that will help her in her conversations
029moving forward I know that the one house budgets were just put out late last night early this morning so um we'll be working through all of that and hopefully some positive news comes from that and then into the final budget um and then just quickly next month April 2nd will be our last committee meeting of the year I believe unless something comes up in May and we will have both of our regions Regent Norwood and Regent hail there to present to us then that's all thank you thank you thank you thank you um on March 28th our schools are closed for superintendent conference day April 3rd there's a board visit tour at souan high school by a show of hands who who will be there you and on April 8th there's our next regularly scheduled
030meeting okay next we will have our um may I have a motion to approve the pcsd nominee for Bose board okay all in favor non opposed here person the room is named after Kim M yes Kim mclusky thank you next we'll have a financial report from Mr vasby all right first for your consideration is the acceptance of the treasures report um we did receive um uh a star check in the amount of 3.6 million lottery eight of 156 um school lunch program had net operations of minus 21,000 uh again to offset that with to take take a look at what food was ordered in inventory um and then really nothing F the report uh in this Treasures report again interest earnings uh you know we contined to very well with our laded investments um I
031will caution though uh we do have an increase in the upcoming budget but I did attend a um present an economic presentation last Wednesday where we shouldn't expect long-term trends to stay at current levels so uh that is something we'll have to keep a close eye on as we bring Revenue in and continue to operate very well we'll have to keep an eye on that that concludes my report thank you may I have a motion to accept the Treasure's report from January 31 has been moved and seconded are there questions hearing none all in favor and oppose thank you okay next for your consideration uh is the bus purchase proposition uh you can see on the memo that I outlined Uh current balance of 9.2 million uh this proposition will have no impact uh on
032taxes or the tax levy uh or the operational budget from that standpoint it's simply um a purchase out of a savings account that we've designated for this purchase or for this purpose um and we ask for the uh the spending plan to be uh approved by our our voters on an annual basis thank you may I have a motion to accept the capital reserve bus purchase proposition thank you there questions hearing none all in favor that motion carries thank you very good next for your consideration is the expenditure of 500,000 for uh the one: one uh purchase of one to one devices in our technology replacement plan as I outlined previously in the presentation thank you may I have a motion to accept the capital reserve instructional technology proposition thank you are there questions hearing
033none all in favor that motion carries thank you all right and next for your consideration is a budget transfer request this is why we we actually try to added we added money to the general fund budget to avoid this we still have a need though to make transfers this in particular will support e- rate funding which has been on hold uh for the past three to four years uh this is purchase again through bosis for in for technology infrastructure switch um switches uh in a in a wiring project um and the transfer is necessary the amount of the money that's not offset by E rate we have to front the money and we get about you know 40% back and the amount that doesn't get funded back from E rate will qualify for Bose's Aid
034so again this is a good way uh to spend money support our infrastructure take advantage of e- rate funds and then uh have that Bose uh Aid come back so it's really well put together proposal and plan from uh Matt Kowski and and obviously Dr Kimmer had a hand in it as well thank you may I have a motion to accept the budget transfer request for technology okay are there any further questions hearing none all in favor that motion carries thank you okay next for your consideration is a settlement of a tax ciary proceeding I think what you're going to find is similar to the past this is another situation where that Equalization rate has continued to drop disproportionately as it pertains to commercial property compared to um you know residential property so this is
035another recommended settlement on behalf of all of the agencies involved for a total refund of 44,000 again we have money set aside and a tax seary Reserve to offset so no operational impact again I'll just caution on public record that we've got to continue to work collaboratively and um you know I'm we're all concerned about the continuing decrease of of uh of that Equalization rate and how hard that is to explain um you know when we set the tax rate in August thank you may I have a motion to accept the tax seary for 90 Lindon Oaks are there questions hearing none all in favor thank you that carries next for your consideration is the addition of uh three travel cards um what I'm finding now is that the price of conferences uh hotels uh
036any travel that's associated with it is increasing in the past we've asked our employees to front the cost and then reimburse them um to be fair um some people are comfortable uh with fronting the money some are not so it is standard operating procedure to have travel cards available especially for a size operation like this I think the approach in the past was to be very fiscally conservative we'll still take that approach but I just think with the uh with the changes that we see uh that this is a NE necessary um precaution going forward we do have in the administrative regulation that there is one available but what we find is it it's limited in scope so again uh we're asking for the addition of these three travel cards they will be tightly regulated
037locked up sign out sheet from an audit standpoint uh I think we're solid but I do think it will alleviate uh the potential for any um considerations as it pertains to personal finances uh as we ask our employees to embark on these professional development Journeys thank you may I have a motion to permit um credit cards for employee travel resolution three additional thank than you are there questions hearing none all in favor none OPP post that carries uh next is uh your consideration of a bid award on the conset agenda thank you may I have a motion to accept the bid award okay thank you okay all in favor cons it's on the consent agenda thank you so much okay next we will have a report from Mr Clark Human Resources thank you and good
038evening uh first for your consideration is the professional staff report we have one certificated staff appointment two School related professional appointments one supervisory and Technical appointment and we also have um perdm substitutes and coaching salaries for you thank you may I have a motion to accept the professional staff report second thank you are there questions hearing none all in favor that carries thank you thank you next for your consideration is the support staff report we have two clerical appointments two clerical resignations and one custodial appointment May I have a motion to accept the support staff report thank you are there questions hearing none all in favor thank you that carries thank you and and last uh typical for this time of the year we have first readings for tenure for your review thank you Mr
039Clark like you are speaking for our special education report Mike will address that it is then the consent agenda thank you so much and next we will have our superintendent's report from Mr Perell it is add the consent oops I'm sorry let me change that we will need an executive uh session this evening to discuss the employment of a particular person I have a motion to accept the call for exective session all in favor thank you that carries thank you you uh at our next board meeting I will be uh bringing an amendment um for the board uh for consideration for approval to policy 1210 uh and that's due to a change in educational law uh policy 1210 currently is listed as board of education qualifications numbers and terms of office the change in educational
040law uh now state that um starting uh next year we must have uh student voice on our Board of Education and the changes um are um relatively simple so a student board member will be considered an ex official uh board member and um it would make sense since we have two high schools to have a mendan board member and a Southerland board member um they will not be allowed to vote uh they will not be allowed to C no days uh they will um not be allowed to attend executive sessions um and uh they will not be paid those are uh the three big ones I will certainly give them Pizza as much as they want um and then we have how will they be selected and uh essentially uh there are six different ways
041they can be selected that we can agree on um here uh the student uh is uh currently an elected uh student president of a high school a student duly elected by the student body so there could be elections at the high schools a student selected by the high school student government a student selected by the high school principal a student selected by the superintendent or student selected by a majority vote of the board um and uh then from there um we can work out the Logistics of um what that specific role of the student would look like there's districts that currently do have um student board members on their board and they may have uh those students be responsible for reporting out uh what's happening um highlights from their their school or anything that they
042feel the board or Community should know about what's happening at southernland what's happening at mendan um and then um for a lot of the districts they've moved that student to the front of the agenda uh and then have allowed that student the student reps to leave after the report um understanding that it's a commitment when when students are busy and so we will be looking um at uh probably seniors from both U Menan and southernland and then you'll see the um the policy it would be not a new policy it'll be a revised uh policy the 1210 that just uh encapsulates the the student part any questions there okay and then the other future work that we are going to have um is just around the the cell phone use uh primarily at the high
043school uh currently at the middle schools uh there are no cell phones allowed out um that that has been um well received um it's been um followed uh uh to the tea by the students the students have been have been great with it so we will um see what the governor's budget proposes as far as the language that she um may use as far as what a distraction free environment looks like but we will have options we also have a um Power Hour coming up where we may um elicit feedback from um community members that come or we may share a recommendation um and ask them for concerns that they might have with their recommendation in speaking with uh area school districts uh most schools seem to be going with um least restrictive to start
044which means um it would be like our middle schools where students um phones are out of sight right they can have them in their pockets they can have them in their cars um but they can't be out and so we'll have to to work through those um types of scenarios and I um would imagine us doing that uh probably in the May June um time frame to have that finished and then be able to communicate that to families in our summer mailings and um and work over the summer so two big changes both involving students one really good one not so good I'm not sure how you feel about that uh but the the um the gist is a distraction for environment so it'll be interesting to see what the language says okay with that
045um uh that's my report thank you superintendent pero thank you thank you so next may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda thank you all in favor the eyes have it thank you so is there any old business any new business so tonight there is no public comment so may I have a motion for adjournment I'm sorry yes sir I did I'm sorry I I did want to mention one more thing um uh Dan White is the uh the district superintend for bosies and he announced his retirement uh for the end of this school year uh so I do want to um really thank Dan for not only his leadership but his friendship his responsiveness you heard Mike share tonight um how amazing bosis has been with managing their costs their structure their
046organization um so um in this public forum I just like to publicly thank Dan for all he's done so well thank you it will be missed thank you thank you so oh yes that's a part of our consent agenda and and we did have a motion to approve that and we have a a thank you letter prepared for them also we have that but it's part of consent agenda so we can't discuss it right it's part of a consent agenda item that's it and I would just go back to PTSA or I can find out tomorrow email me exactly exactly thank you so may I have an motion for the adjournment thank you all in favor