Pittsford Board of Education Meeting - April 5, 2022

001i pledge allegiance 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 may have a motion to the to approve the agenda this evening oh first of all i just want to tell everybody that we have one board member that's on the screen pete sullivan who's with us tonight remotely pete if you could just give a wave awesome thank you um if i may have a motion to approve the agenda please thanks robin thanks renee any edits all in favor opposed motion carried the 2022-2023 proposed budget presentation and adoption darren please and mike good evening also say good evening everyone out here thank you for being present for our last uh and final board presentation relative to

002the budget so just walk to walk us through the agenda the first uh part of our our time together is to define the purpose and legal requirements of the superintendent and the board of education we'll review the budget guidelines the enacted budget impacts which is to be determined since the state is proposed budget will probably pass wednesday or thursday we'll go through and we'll walk you each through the budget programs and services format and we will review summary of revenue sources and introduce two propositions neither of which which will have a tax or debt impact and then we'll conclude with any questions that you have before um i ultimately ask you to vote on the budget to transfer from our developmental process to a budget of your own so tonight's tasks we'll transition from budget

003development to budget spending we will present the expand expected funding resources for the proposed budget and we will review the two propositions to the voters regarding the use of reserve funds for specific legal purposes and again both of those reserves will not have a tax impact so the purpose of tonight is present the superintendents recommended proposed budget to the board of education to consider adapting as your own we will need formal action at the time so it's either approved or not approved and you'll also be asked to approve the new york state property tax cap report card also we need to meet the usual legal requirements of the budget development process while addressing the current health education and financial environments the proposed budget utilized the same staffing as the 2021-22 school year plus positions added

004during the current school year also it reflects the level of sustainability taking care of today's urgent priorities without creating a crisis for tomorrow we've been talking about a fiscal cliff for probably a decade now so we want to make sure that what we do today does not hinder us moving forward in the future so the process obviously has started and all of you are very familiar with us with the district planning team establishing budget guidelines i'll go through these quickly one of the things that we want to make sure that we have is a rigorous engaging equitable and authentic curriculum we want to make sure that we're providing the highest level of curriculum to our students we want to provide experiences that reflect the benefits of the whole child so maintaining those curricular and extracurricular

005courses and activities we want to increase the use of technology we want to support equity and inclusion practices we want to support sel and mental health supports which we know have been significant this year not only in pittsford but across the state across the country we want to make sure we have safe schools and safe facilities again we haven't talked a lot this year or last year around the worst case scenarios relative to things like active shooter and want to bring back that sense of urgency relative to our physical plant and making sure we have a level of preparedness for it which will entail a significant amount more of training in supports and possible changes to our physical plant we also want to make sure we're recruiting a diverse candidate pool and we have time

006for professional collaboration so our staff are at the top of their game um as we put them in front of our students we also understand the importance of professional learning and recognizing that we have learners from this end to this end in a classroom and we need to make sure that we're acknowledging and meeting the needs of all of our learners staying abreast on the best practices relative to curriculum and assessment same with equity and inclusion which need to be aligned with our district goals professional learning communities which again has been embedded as part of our culture where we have staff sharing best practices relative to their grade level and content so that our students whether they are in a classroom at menden or a classroom at sutherland are going to have similar high quality

007experiences again safety preparedness will take a lot more staff development and then we as a school district are much more than the the teachers that are in front of our students it's our paraprofessionals it's our support staff it's our secretaries it's our administrators it's everyone and making sure that all of them are receiving the highest quality professional development so we understand that from the beginning of this process especially with inflation and where cpi is right now that we want to make sure that we are not exceeding the tax cap i'm looking for innovative sources of revenue so for example we just received through our foundation a hundred thousand dollar donation but continuing that work from our school foundation uh in other places uh to seek revenue that does that does not impact the taxpayer we

008want to make sure we're required we're hiring and recruiting staff of the highest caliber as you know this is an area of concern across the state and the level of students and qualified teachers that are entering the profession along with the amount of staff that are leaving the profession is a little bit concerning so making sure we have the highest quality we actually just went through a round of boy two days of i want to say 24 interviews for elementary hirings in trying to get ahead of the game so that we can hire the people that are of the highest quality before they're interviewing with other school districts as well we also need to be cognizant of what's happening around us with property values and and economic uncertainties and then seeking cost efficiencies to further

009mitigate burdensome and financial impact of different mandates and we're seeing some some light at the end of the tunnel with that we also in our guidelines have said that we need to maintain fiscal stability now into the future by looking at our reserve accounts again i would say that when we are audited by the state our reserve accounts continue to be among the the highest praised in our area we've had auditors and others look at working with darren and our business department as a model and wanting darren and others to come and speak to their boards and and work with colleagues we have a double a1 bond rating which is the highest level we can we want to maintain that we need to maintain our community's investment in facilities and infrastructure today we shut down

010sutherland high school because of pipes that were probably 60 years old we took out 8 000 plus gallons of water from the basement a couple weeks ago we had a water main break at mendon high school we've had many outages at our elementary schools so looking to work with our capital projects relative to infrastructure just like we would want to maintain our roof and maintain our furnace we have to do that at a much larger scale in our schools and then obviously advocacy with legislators to appropriate levels of funding which have been very fruitful for us um over the last uh probably five six years of of advocacy and finally meeting the legal mandates and contractual obligations i'm going to turn over to darren for a second but also want to recognize leanne i think

011you're here right so leanne and darren are such an integral part of of our budget process and leanne's office and darren's office work magic relative to our budget so with that i'm going to turn over to darren to take us through the next several slides thank you and before i get started i also want to say thank you to leanne in the business office a budget is a story about the future that's written based on the facts of the past and the accuracy of that future is only based on the integrity of the data that we used and our teams does a great job looking at the state aid progress you find it interesting the superintendent sits down when there's a slide there's no answer so to speak because there is no state budget right

012now so last time we were together i shouldn't say last time back in january when the governor's proposal came out that's what's in the left side in blue there the key things to take away from that um was she was committed to continuing the uh the trend to try to get foundation aid fully funded on an annual basis but the key is on an annual basis so think of it like your mortgage you're making your full mortgage payment each month but you might be in arrears for three years of not making any payments so we are we're a district at that time or two years ago we were at 54 funded uh some districts were as much as 120 percent uh we moved up to about 65 percent this year and now it's going to

013go to about 78 and within two years we should be up to that full amount uh part of the caveat there is what will that those increases if any be after that and so we'll talk about that a little more in a little bit so we talk about state aid there's all kinds of state aid reports that you might see in the media you might see on websites etc and we have to really flush that data out because sometimes the state uses old databases they make certain assumptions etc we might know things that are happening during the current year that will affect next year's state aid so we make those adjustments when we budget so we're using the governor's proposal and this is basically what you saw a few months ago foundation aid almost a

01434 increase which is you know unheard of foundation aid as far as comparison to our total budget compared to most school districts in the county is pretty low um but it's still a 3.8 million dollar increase i will draw your attention to boces as well you see the decrease there that's partially due to covid for a couple of things this year we thought we would have more kids that would want remote learning and participate in the virtual academy we did not so we did not spend the money therefore we're not going to get the aid on that as well as similar to what we're dealing with with transportation both seasons as well they have a number of programs that they cannot staff so therefore they've had to tell school districts we can't provide the service

015to you or you're on a waiting list so again if we're not spending the funds we're not going to get the aid on it so going all the way down we're looking at about 10.8 percent or 2.7 million dollar increase in our total state aid looking at the foundation aid to give a little bit of history if you will um we are increasing our percentage that's what the chart on the bottom shows we're up to about 76 percent we're receiving about 76 percent of what we should if you look since 2007-8 when foundation aid started it was governor spitzer at the time um we're about 101 million dollars in arrears over that period of time don't hold your breath i don't see see it coming anytime soon but we're very happy to be fully funded

016so looking at the spending plan high level and this basically matches the budget books that you have that what schools this is by by program and you have the major sections and we're going to go down deeper into each one of these sections in a minute so we're proposing a 149 million dollar budget 5.6 million dollar increase or 3.94 percent over the current year's budget this budget serves over 5 500 students and approximately 1145 full-time equivalent staff looking at the schools and then here's the major components for each portion of the schools such as school administration support regular teaching etc the schools make up about a 4.79 increase some of that has to do with staffing some most of which happened during the current year within that we flushed down into the elementary schools uh

017social emotional learning is a big focus and continues to be so as well as special education and you need to be cognizant of as students move from say fifth grade to sixth grade their paraprofessional or aid might move with them to the to the middle school so you may see some changes as far as that's concerned in the middle schools about 4.4 percent increase there as well and that's for seven and a half pair of professionals as one of the drivers for special education and kids coming back from the hybrid model uh during the current year as well as social emotional supports and i should preface beforehand each one of these sections we had unprecedented number of retirements this year uh that is reflected throughout the entire budget so there's some attrition savings that offset

018some of the increases high schools very similar as with a special education as far as some staffing that came over from middle school with the students as well as from the hybrid program as well as social worker and in other behavioral supports central student services a slight decrease to it despite increasing behavior specialist and ell and speech the big driver there that i already spoke of is the bose side that has to do with the the virtual academy not participating that program that was almost four hundred thousand dollars instructional services that's the office of the assistant superintendent of instruction standards leaders etc no staffing changes in the in that area 2.36 percent increase support services this is basically anything that's not providing services directly to students so finance and auditing buildings and grounds transportation is

019the only exception as far as the services six percent increase some major things to flag here are in transportation we are reducing the number of bus drivers we're budgeting for by 10 based on the routing structures that we've had for this year that still leaves us about 30 bus drivers short so if anybody wants to be a bus driver talk to me after the meeting please as well as one position transitioning from support services over to human resources central administration includes the board of education and all the things that entail with that such as legal defense etc district clerk um there are some increases in the cost for providing uh the vote uh in may because the cost of the county giving the machines is increasing um the superintendent's office personnel and public relations that's

020at 4.47 so it's called undistributed it's not allocated throughout the entire budget uh debt service and transfers for those of us who have been around for many years we're actually going to make our last payment on the huge 106 million dollar capital project on one of the bonds the bond that's going to stay is the one that's for the falcons road middle school because that was building a brand new school that goes on for 20 years as well as the boces capital project we've made our final payment on that or we will make our final payment so we're able to decrease the debt service benefits is the other area that represents about half of our total budget increase and that's pretty common from year to year we're doing a lot of things both as a

021county with the consortium's health consortiums as well as workers compensation to try to control those costs and our trends are much are far below the community rated programs as well as various contract negotiations and things of that nature the boces admin charge just so you know we're all part of boces it's cooperative education services this is our portion of it based on our what's called arwata so putting it all together and looking at a pie chart as far as to see where the money goes from a program services 39 percent goes into the schools directly and a similar percentage and similar amount goes into the unallocated we just got done talking about one of the common questions i get is people want to see what's what the state calls the budget and by object of

022expense so they want to know total salaries for example so the way we just looked at the budget it's hard to know what's going on exactly with salaries our salaries are up 4.37 that's inclusive of the positions that we talked about that we added and you see benefits equipment etc some real cost drivers are contractual utilities and we all see it every day when we go to the fuel pump our buses are seeing the same exact thing and our heat for the uh for the buildings um lee and leanne and i almost every day for a couple of weeks kept saying we got to increase it more because it kept changing and that was part of the conversations via emails with all the school business officials boces services are down are decreased a little bit

023as we talked about and the debt service decrease so overall we have 149.5 we're going to round off 0.6 million budget that we're proposing five point six million dollar increase or three point nine four percent so pretty true to previous forms salary and benefits make up seventy eight percent of our budget you'll see in a few minutes but coincidentally a similar percentage is our tax levy and then the right-hand chart shows if you're looking at the increase the 5.6 million dollars what percentage or what the drivers are there so that's the proposed spending plan uh how we're going to pay for it we just got done talking about the state aid at the top there federal funds that is not the stimulus money the millions of dollars of stimulants money that is required by law

024to be held separate from the general fund budget we cannot commingle them this is for medicaid reimbursement students that are medicaid eligible we can get a little bit of reimbursement from that county sales tax is trending up tremendously um part of that has to do with taxing the online sales use of fund balance in reserves we're able to wean our dependence off of that a little bit that's always good to do when you can and down at the very bottom the property tax levy what we're asking the voters to pay 111 million dollars and it's 2.53 increase and that's within the property tax cap the legal formula so you can see there that when you look at the total revenues and compare that to appropriations the budget is it balanced just a pi pie chart

025to show the percentage or of support for our budget tax levy this year is 75 percent that's actually down a little bit from previous years and that's factor of the state aid increasing a few percentage points due to the commitment to the foundation aid so that completes the superintendent's proposed budget as previously mentioned we have a couple of additional propositions neither are unusual to what we normally do but for those who may not know a reserve fund in this case a capital reserve fund a reserve is simply like a savings account the law allows a school district to have savings accounts for certain things or reserve they call them reserves these are for capital type of expenses and then we can further qualify them for certain things so we have one for the purchase of

026buses and we also have one for the purchase of tech instructional technology you you may see a number of districts uh go out with propositions for their buses where they're asking their voters to levy additional tax to pay for those buses and or additional issued debt we are not asking for either one of those we're simply asking to take money out of the savings account to pay for these items so first for the buses we are requesting to replace 12 buses um 1166 passenger 130 passenger uh we would like to trade in 20 buses so we're downsizing the fleet part of the reason why we're doing so many for those who might work been here for a while back in 2014-15 we had a number of buses they had a lot of maintenance issues and

027rusting out it was a a problem that the industry was having with that model of bus so we replaced more than our typical 10 to 12 buses so we're going to get rid of those because they're becoming problematic uh transmission issues and you're looking at about thirty eight hundred dollars a pop to repair those transmissions so we're gonna trade those in about one million five hundred seventy eight thousand dollars is the estimated cost to do so the trade-in allowance may reduce that some and we're estimating about 930 dollars in state 930 million dollar 930 000. can we go back to the million i like the million better it's if we get the 930 million we won't be doing a budget for about five years that will be used to replenish the reserves so we can

028keep using into the future so this is just the wording for that reserve that will act the voters will actually see at the at the poll um and again we are not asking to issue additional debt or taxes to do so and lastly as our director of technology showed you we have the capital reserve fund for instructional technology we want to do phase two for our one-to-one initiative for the laptop computers so we're posing to purchase 725 000 worth of computers uh to migrate into the additional grades and replace the old technology okay taking us to the home stretch some of the highlights in the budget is are as follows we as we were thinking about this year's budget as opposed to the last couple years budgets we were thinking about next year being relatively

029normal so i think that we're at the point now where we can say we can resume full operations similar to what we did this year the budget is balanced it remains within the property tax cap it preserves all of our programs so there are no program cuts within this budget it's eased considerably by the efforts of our legislator to address the financial aid issues so as darin shared we are incrementally going up to 100 percent funded the year to year increase for the spending plan is 3.9 percent in the property tax cap levy increase is 2.53 and again we are within the tax cap we and i think this is important to note um the the budget and tax levy growth are below the county average despite having the lowest foundation aid per pupil and

030a percent fully funded in western new york area so as you look at our budget a lot of the graphs that you saw are inverse to other districts so when you see our levy being 70 percent in our aid being 20 percent sometimes that's flipped and so we do rely on our tax levy more than any other district in the county and we're pleased to be able again to come to the board with a budget that is within the tax cap it's may 10th for next steps we have a public budget hearing and may 17th is the budget vote and board election we at this point have time for any questions from the board relative to what you saw i think this is our fourth or fifth budget meeting so hopefully you feel like you've

031been apprised along the way but if there's any questions be happy to field them pete i want to make sure i'm covering you so if you have any questions just raise your hand along the way i take that as a no anyone else at the table okay well this isn't new to anyone here we've been at this for a while yep okay thank you okay thank you with that may i have a motion to approve the proposed budget thanks ted thanks sarah questions all in favor opposed motion carried okay we need an approval of the minutes from march 15th please motion to approve thanks jeff renee any edits there all in favor opposed motion carried board of education reports we have a few upcoming monroe county school board association meetings we have board leadership on

032the 4th of may our executive committee next meeting is the 27th of april information exchange is on the 13th of april the 27th is labor relations legislative is tomorrow sarah i think you're scheduled to attend that um and we are finished with steering committee for the year which is crazy to think dates to remember the 7th of april we have a board tour and visit we will be having a visit with our staff at mendensunden center elementary which is pretty exciting for us this will be one of our first visits in a while the tour is at 7 15 the visit's at 7 30 and then we also have a guest visitor visiting the district yeah we're really excited to have a representative from senator brooke's office coming to join us for our tour and

033getting a chance to see our students in action as well so i'm looking forward to that and then unfortunately the senator herself is not able to join us for this visit but she does plan to come in september so great thank you thank you for arranging arranging that for us too schools closed for superintendents conference day on the 8th of april and then will be closed for spring break from the 15th to the 22nd and our next board meeting is on the 26th i forgot to take a show of hands who will be at the tour actually at mended center iffy for renee i know that okay great thank you moving on to the boces annual election and budget vote i need to pull that up real quickly so with the the board seats for

034boces we will have to take individual um motions so i will go through each candidate and we'll take a motion for approval the first candidate we do know very very well we mentioned her last time kim mccluskey who is a resident of the pittsford central school district she is running for monroe one boces board for a term of office which will begin on july 1st 2022 and end on june 30th 2025. if i may have a motion at the table for kim thank you ted thank you robin all in favor opposed motion carried i see you pete okay seat number two to cast one vote for the election of d brian buttram resident of rush henrietta central school district as a member of the monroe one boces board for a term of office which will

035begin july 1 2022 and end on june 30th 2025. may i have a motion to approve sarah and renee all in favor opposed motion carried and seat three to cast one vote for the election of margaret burns resident of the west irondequoit central school district as a member of monroe one boces board for term of office which begins on april 28th 2022 and ending on june 30th 2024 may have a motion thanks jeff renee all in favor opposed motion carried and then we do have a fourth seat for east rochester unfortunately it is a vacant seat they did not find a candidate to fill that so anyone here from east rochester okay we also have to approve the administrative budget vote so we are voting to approve the proposed boces administrative budget in the amount

036of five million six hundred and ninety eight thousand four hundred seventy nine dollars may have a motion to approve thanks robin thanks sarah any questions about that all in favor opposed motion carried okay did i cover all bases dub okay financial report darren long time no see i know uh treasury report for february uh we did receive the fourth quarter uh sales tax it's up about 230 000 more than the same time period last year and you saw in the budget that we increased the overall annual appropriation for that the school lunch fund is doing much better than it did the year before as far as participation we still would like to see it get a little bit better compared to a couple years ago but our revenues are up about 150 percent more than

037the same time period last year and exp compared to expenses about 40 percent more so we are not running the deficit that we had last year that's great news thank you may i have a motion to approve the treasurer's report please ted thanks renee questions for darren all in favor opposed motion carried okay next is a correction or addendum i guess you will for the seeker that we did about a year ago for the capital project that the voters voted on the sed process to approve our project they would have liked to have seen it be more explicit about the roof work at mendon high school even though it was in all the materials that we presented to the voters as well as to the state so rather than spend more weeks trying to battle

038it out i just said i would have that amended so the fourth bullet in what you have before you specifically spells out by itself the men in high school roof repair okay may have a motion to approve please thanks sarah and jeff any questions about that all in favor opposed motion carried thanks darren human resource report sean good evening first for your consideration is the professional staff report we have one administrative appointment one administrative resignation for retirement with 16 years six months of service we have one certificated staff appointment two school related professional appointments one part-time claims auditor we have 11 srp resignations for retirement totaling 170.82 years of service three srp resignations one psychologist intern resignation one part-time deputy claims auditor appointment and we have revised spring coaching salaries with changes highlighted been busy

039we're busy we have a motion please renee and ted questions all in favor opposed motion carried sean before we go to the second part of your report i would just like to highlight the administrative retirement and that's darren uh kenny our assistant superintendent for business um boy darren when you told me you were retiring this year we've talked about that a lot and i kept thinking this was just another conversation uh until it became official so i do want to share a few things um that are actually pretty hard to articulate about darren so in the work that he's done but he's been responsible for all the real hard stuff in the district so he's been responsible for leading the business office the operations maintenance security transportation food services and darren you've created a legacy

040of fiscally responsible budgets year after year you've maintained positive comptroller reports which is amazing all of our ongoing audits have been positive you've really led the county and the state i would say in how to use reserves you've brought to us continuously year after year the highest bond rating per moody's investor services which saves the taxpayers a lot of money and in the district a lot of money when it's time to borrow now you've also done what i think has seemed impossible which is getting our full-day kindergarten to receive full-time aid that's something we've been at for several years and you never let go of that so quite remarkable the other thing that i'd like to highlight is under your direction we've achieved utility and maintenance efficiencies you've been on top of our capital improvements

041you've used our capital reserve fund which allows us to generate state aid without new taxes to the community and the other thing that's that's really unique about us is that we enter this pandemic in the best fiscal health that we've had in decades and we've never had a history of operating in a deficit under your leadership and i guess i would close by just saying most importantly you have a love for kids and you've shown a desire which i think is pretty unique in your position about learning as much as you possibly can around our instructional programs our sel programs so you can see for yourself the value to students juxtaposed to the costs for the district you're always rolling up your sleeves you're ready to work with anyone you've been student centered and you

042place a high value on helping others as evidenced by you know something that many people might not know but darren's a pilot he does a lot of volunteer flights for people in need and for countries in need or for states in need or he's done a ton students in need of training and working with community service relative to his pilot's license and those that know you darren know that you have a heart of gold and you have a brilliant mind two qualities that are going to be very very hard to replace so i would just ask that for those that that don't fully know darren um that you do take my word for it he's amazing he is amazing and he's going to be so tough to replace so please join me in a round

043of applause for darren's commitment all right we can go on okay all right next for your consideration is the support staff report we have two office clerk appointments two school aid resignations one bus driver resignation one maintenance appointment two food service worker appointments one food service worker substitute resignation may have a motion please thank you jeff and robin questions all in favor can't see pete now okay okay opposed motion carried thank you and finally for your consideration is a new administrative position for coordinator of social emotional learning may have a motion please thanks ted and robin questions all in favor opposed motion carried thank you so much darren i don't know how to follow up on what mike had to say but i have to tell you that the board will miss you terribly and

044the value that you have given to each one of us in becoming a board member educating us on fiscal responsibility has been absolutely incredible i can't thank you enough you will be missed at this table so we'll end there thank you [Applause] special education report is on the consent agenda okay thank you and superintendents report so we have we've been dealing with quite we do not need an executive session tonight thank you um we've been dealing with a lot of covid stuff as a as a group up here so we've been very short staffed this last week we're not seeing a huge uh uptick in our in our buildings uh most of our buildings are between zero and three wouldn't you say shaina is is probably the okay so we have a high of five

045at one of our elementary schools and the rest are between zero and three so we're hanging in there i think we're just pushing through with that concept of looking at this as an endemic and making testing and masking available for those that need it from a central office team standpoint we've had several of us out with illnesses and so this last week has been difficult and we're almost all back here today we're short two of us i think at one point we're short uh 75 percent of us so uh we're back and and hanging in there so between the sicknesses and what's happened uh the last few days it's been relatively crazy uh from our perspective up here so one of the craziness um things that that we contended with was sutherland high school we

046were able to hang in there the bulk of the day on monday then we had to close knowing that we had four broken pipes they had to bring out like i shared earlier over 8 000 gallons of stuff out of the buildings right now they are disinfecting and cleaning the sutherland basement and um again it's it's a result of a very old pipes but jeff beardsley are you here can i don't know if jeff can see him see me or hear me so it's remarkable so jeff if you could just come in here i think most most places would have closed menden with a water main break and probably sutherland for a couple days so uh jeff and his crew really do all of our work along with the town um together and the work

047they did today in crawl spaces and in drilling big holes so so i'm going to have to apologize to the sutherland students on behalf of jeff's wonderful expertise because you're going to have school tomorrow so southern students you will be back you will be back sutherland teachers are not allowed to clap uh so on a on a more serious note um and this is the the last of of my updates is that um obviously there's a full crowd here for a reason uh so i i want to address uh the rainbow crowd the club uh no the rainbow club not the rainbow crowd controversy in a roundabout way but also in a direct way at the same time so just bear with me i have some notes but i also just want to kind of

048speak from my heart as well so this year more than more than years in the past i've made it a point to visit schools and check in with students both formally and informally as as much as i possibly as much as i possibly could and i will tell you um it's it's really hard for for those of you that aren't in school and aren't able to see our students and only can see our students through what you hear on social media or the news our students are incredible they're incredible in every every sense of the word so you can hear you know different things and those different things happen in every single district across the the globe our kids are spectacular last night we we had a a small forum of students that spoke i

049meet regularly with with a group of sutherland and mendon students i'm in the halls i'm with the principals i'm working with um the the teachers and staff and i do feel i have my finger on the pulse without question in our kids are top-notch and so that's something all of you need to be really proud of and in our community is top-notch uh and um there's there's there's not a better place we we have a lot to celebrate and a lot to be thankful of and thankful for so our kids are compassionate they're empathetic and they want the same thing i think that all of us here want they want our schools to be filled with respect and they want our schools to be filled with care and they all want to feel welcomed they

050want to feel valued i make it a point when i when i speak with students in large groups to talk about how hard it is to be a student today and so just go bear with me here for a second think about when you were in high school and what you were doing in high school literally think about it it was it was still kind of hard right it was hard because you dealt with you know all the stuff that you do while trying to figure out your life and and who you are and but our students are now doing this um with social media 20-fold on them i don't know how our students do it and and not only do i not know how our students do it but they do it so well

051most of them but it's hard this is a hardest era i think it is to be a student in high school right now with social media and other pressures so i do acknowledge that with them and then at the same time i acknowledge the fact that um they're also really resilient and they're they're they're they're finding their way through um i i worry about um our students and and what they're seeing and and feeling um based on what's happening with social media i worry about how they feel about themselves their own self-worth i worry about bullying that happens on social media i worry about the negative stuff on social media a lot of us are here tonight because of stuff that have happened with adults on social media right so we're so as adults i

052think we struggle on how to navigate social media um our kids struggle how to navigate with social media but their brains are a little bit different too and so we need to we just need to be cognizant of that i i don't know how many students are listening to this tonight the sutherland students are probably still out having fun frolicking after their day off but very sincerely i would say to all of our students that are listening tonight regardless of who you are regardless of your race your identity your socioeconomic status your mental health needs your religion your level of ability or disability what's critical and i believe this to be true for every single person in this room know that in pittsford we more than accept you and we appreciate all that you bring

053to our schools so i don't want people to be misled with the reasons people are here tonight because i know and i know when looking in your eyes tonight regardless of what sign you have or or or what beliefs or values you're brought up on we want our kids to be well we want our kids to do well and we want our kids to feel welcomed in our schools the hard part is how right so we have the same end in mind but how we get there we all have different ideas and i think that's where the rubber meets the route now and those are the things that as being members of an amazing community we can figure out we can do that a week ago and you talk about how things change here a

054week ago i was thinking that tonight we would spend our time processing the business of the board i thought we would spend a lot of time on the budget questions around the budget i thought we would um i was going to bring in a huge cake for darren um but but the reality and it's the reality it's our reality right now is that social media kind of took over in in a in like a in a blink of an eye it took over so we saw a lot of stuff happening across the board a lot of conversations if you want to call them that some productive some not productive some i wouldn't want my children to see and somebody would going back and forth around a rainbow club ptsa enrichment proposal and all of that

055stuff that happened i would say between probably thursday and today has spiraled into into the boardroom and my concern with all of this and and and i would ask for everyone if you want the truth don't go to social media right i i really want you to and i applaud all of you for being here because i think by you being here means that you're invested enough to find out what's what's the truth and what's what's happening um so i appreciate that there's been a lot of misinformation a lot of speculation a lot of unnecessary hurt feelings because we're a community we're a community that boy there isn't a better one and we need to take care of each other so let's do that let's find a way to take care of each other here

056i i want to share with you what what i think happened and and where we go from here so historically our ptsa enrichment activities have been discussed with principals and they've been approved so historically we've had chess club lego club and a couple other clubs sure yes um and and they've they've kind of been you know just approved but they've always they've always gone through um the principle and then they're there's a registration process and and all of and all of that then we begin so recently we identified that some buildings had different processes different levels of communication different procedures different levels of approval and in some cases we had principals find out about enrichment activities after the registration was open so we need to fix that what i love about our district is that

057it gave us the opportunity to instead of saying you did this wrong or you did this wrong or you did this wrong it allowed our ptsa president and myself to come together to say we need to do better we need to solidify a process to make sure that all nine buildings when there's enrichment activities that there's a process the things just aren't rubber stamped that there's not one thing happening in one building and one thing happening in another building so i'm going to share with you i think which is part of the impetus of this of what happened wednesday or thursday of last week so wednesday or thursday of last week there was a conversation about how we're going to look at enrichment activities from ptsa so all program requests are now going to be

058reviewed by the ptsa after school enrichment program committee our assistant superintendent for instruction and our building principals that may host the program will all also have a part in what's approved or not approved and as appropriate our assistant superintendent will also review the proposed offerings with other people that may be necessary such as our coordinator for equity and because this impacts principles in buildings all the principles need to be part of that discussion and that's called our elementary leadership team so that group is pulled together all current and existing ptsa enrichment programs will be asked to reapply for approval using this process and programs that wanted to run in the fall must submit their applications by august 1st and this process will apply to everything it will apply to all all programs so since that

059was outlined i believe on wednesday uh right around there there was a lot of conversation in the meeting and um it went from there to social media and then we were bombarded with a lot of different things everything from you're doing this because you you can't promote something or you're doing this to boycott something or you're doing and the reason is what i shared earlier is that we need consistency we need transparency and we need accountability for everything that we bring to our students after school and we can do that in tandem because we've shared a great relationship with ptsa so i'm getting close to the end here i heard that did someone say thank god all right so i would say this that we're here now because of something that really happened in the

060spirit of trying to approve improve a process along with i think a club that is of a sensitive nature and people started just going um crazy on on social media with that so where are we with all of this so we received two applications for rainbow club which is an after-school ptsa enrichment activity from thornell road and from jeff road we will take those clubs along with every those enrichment activities along with any others through this process at the end of the day i know you know if i were to go full circle we want to work with everyone we want to work collaboratively we want to listen to our community we want to make sure that we create the best environment possible for our students proposals for these committees could come back denied they

061can come back approved they can come back we need more information which isn't a bad thing because at some point as we look at how do we get to that how we all need to have our voices heard there's no one's voice in here that's wrong we need to start listening to each other though so i i will clarify the following and then and then i'm going to uh conclude my my report so some things to to understand about the ptsa enrichment it happens after school the board of education has no role in approving ptsa enrichment programs i have no idea how there were um there was a campaign of some sort to say email the board um or email me um it's it's it's not a popularity thing it's it's it's just listening to

062people's voices because you all need to be heard um but it goes through a process and it's not the the board's not going to approve or deny a ptsa enrichment club enrichment activities are developed by ptsa and students can only participate with parent approval so you know as i look at signs that say support parental rights you know that's part that's built in to this is that students can't attend an enrichment without parental consent uh just like when when we are boy back in the day when when i was a principal at barker road we wouldn't do health curriculum around certain topics without parental input you are in charge of your kids ptsa wants to support students that are in need of that support so there doesn't have to be a yay or nay this

063is this is about choice and it's about certain parts of the district overseeing you know certain things to make sure that we're looking out for the best interests of our kids as well so the mission of the ptsa's enrichment is to provide a safe and supervised after-school educational enriching or recreational program for school-aged children grades k-12 building level ptsas will choose programs based on their individual demographics interest and parent commitment so um you know i i guess i just want everyone to know that we're we're in an era right now where we're we're in a place right now where um we're listening to kids a lot more um i think we should have done it a lot sooner and and um but we have we have students that that need a lot of different things

064and so if we can support students if they need this support or this support or this support this is ptsa's attempt in providing an additional level of support parental choice is there um there's choice in in in in in all of this and it'll be quite frank it's it's um something and i haven't seen the applications yet but i have a lot of questions because i think that our questions are what makes us better and i think that feedback is what makes us better firing back and forth on social media doesn't i know how strongly people feel on different parts of this but boy i will tell you if if i think about my child i'll do whatever they need for them to be happy and healthy and what my child needs is not what

065deb's child needs or what amy's child needs and as a schools what we've found where we've gone from here to here um and and so our job is to support um and and to do it with a level of accountability a level of parent input and again when we talk about ptsa the p is for parents so parents have choice in all of this and at the end of the day um we want to we want to do our diligence and making sure that one program is run they're run looking at it from a lot of different lenses that we feel by working together we can do better so with that i thank you all thanks mike may have a motion to approve the consent agenda sarah all in favor opposed motion carried old business

066new business so i do have a statement for new business and it relates to what mike has been talking about but i have to share that last night some of our board members had the pleasure of attending yesterday's second power hour and i have to thank vincent french for being the facilitator of that it was really unbelievable to see our students group together a panel of students who represent our community our community that's comprised of uniquely beautiful people that esteemed panel of students should give us all a promising hope for a better future of pittsford and of our greater rochester community they describe the importance of acceptance and understanding of our differences so it's come to our attention that you know there have been a lot of attacks on social media and it's been an

067outlet for divisiveness on the topic of a ptsa sponsored after-school enrichment program to clarify the board of education does not have jurisdiction to approve or deny ptsa sponsored after-school enrichment programs which is why this isn't an agenda item for tonight's meeting that said given the vitriol shared amongst social media challenge channels the board of education needs to be very clear that we denounce all forms of hate and discrimination in this case toward our lgbtq plus students and families the district and the board of education have been and will continue to be committed to building an inclusive inclusive learning environment which celebrates and leverages all of our differences we're all different and unique the foundation of our board of education is set by our district mission and vision statements and i welcome all of you to

068go out on our website and take a look at our mission and vision it's what drives each one of us behind this table and our core values are such an integral part of what we do in this district i can't stress that enough so i just want to reiterate what our core values are we're student centered we provide support a supportive environment for all realizing that we don't we don't have a hundred percent of our students that fall into that category we're focused on continuous improvement at all times we're progressive and we work collaboratively our job as board members is to remove barriers for students to have access to an equitable learning environment within our school buildings we need to cultivate the unique gifts and talents of all of our students and embrace the culture

069of this beautiful pittsford community so thank you [Applause] so we have had 81 write in public comments for this evening so sit down so sit down and get comfy we are not going to read those we are going to post them so anyone who has submitted a write-in public comment prior to the noon deadline we will have those posted we did have one of those public comments that was regarding a refusal to mask if mandated in the future the rest of them pertain to the after school enrichment program so i do need to remind everyone of our board protocol i don't think i know everyone in the room i know a lot of familiar faces but i would like to just reiterate the protocol about public comment the pittsford board of education values transparency and

070public comments made during its meetings as such the pittsford board of education provides this agenda item at its regular meetings board of education meetings are not public forums rather they're business meetings held in public where dialogue is not normally conducted with audience members the purpose of this agenda item is for the board to receive respectful and constructive feedback opinions and information from district residents given the amount of public comment and to be fair to our residents privilege of the floor will only be permitted to those who reside in the district comments are taken under the advisement by the board of education and superintendent of schools respect and civility are required during these meetings particularly as we have students who are both here tonight and probably watching at home comments should be in reference to an

071interest or topic not an individual each speaker will have the floor for no more than three minutes and yielding time among speed speakers is not permitted the board president reserves the right to limit the total amount of speaking time this evening we will have 30 minutes of speaking time just to let everyone here know that in an effort to avoid repetitiveness if speakers are attending with other residents who have the same input we ask that you group your group designates one person to address the board as a group and we will give you an extra time if you so choose to do that for speakers who do not follow meeting and decorum protocols the speaker's privilege to use the floor will no longer be recognized by the board of education those planning to come forth

072when i call your name if you could please give us your address be clearly into the microphone and we will keep your three-minute time limit and robin i'm going to ask you to keep the 30 minute time limit okay all right that said catherine baker you're first doesn't matter right there um good evening i'm katherine baker i reside at 97 caversham woods as was mentioned i'm here in support of rainbow club and i'm here as a parent as a liaison to the dei committee and as a pediatrician i feel that rainbow clubs are a safe supportive place for gender diverse youth and youth who come from gender diverse families this safe and inclusive space is important for children and as mentioned earlier these are optional where parents have to choose for their children to participate

073we know that there are considerable mental health disparities for gender diverse youth including increased rates of depression anxiety and suicidality so when i think about a safe inclusive space for young children at an early age i think that can be a preventative measure to just to combat these disparities and prevent these mental health outcomes so i'm here to support rainbow club and i think as a community and as a school district if we want to support every child in every family and be truly inclusive then this is something that we should offer at all of our elementary schools thank you thanks catherine theresa young good evening everyone my name is theresa young and i'm a taxpayer at 44 green track my family has been living here for almost 18 years were very pleased to see

074many kind loving and dedicated teachers and staffs at pittsford as a parent i have deep concerns about the things happening in recent years and our ranking for both high schools keep going down nationwide and statewide here is the fact mendel high school was 82 in 193 in 2021 111 jobs southern 116 in 2012 and 319 in 2021. teresa you're addressing the board you're not addressing the audience jobs just in nine years we choose to live in pittsford it's an investment for many families investment comes with a set of obligations and standards investment has check and balance we're used to trust the school and teachers confidently give our children in their hands but things are changing maybe without your noticing over here's another fact over a two-year period data shows statewide enrollment of our public schools

075has decreased by five percent during the same two-year period charter school enrollment rose by fourteen thousand and home school students are quadrupled i noticed there's a lot of attention on the pronoun but you know there are other seven parts of speech like noun verb adverb conjunction interjection proposition and adjective pronoun is just one out of eight schools should teach the facts and reasoning moral values should come from home and church school should provide a safe environment for teachers to teach if teachers need to worry about how to just a boy or girl to avoid offending them and it may get them cancelled or even get fired how can they how can they focus on teaching passionately parents we should take the ownership of our children's education our children are god's blessing to us i strongly

076encourage you to go to your kids classroom to school to district to volunteer to attend the meetings so speak out if you don't agree with them you have the right to vote which some other countries don't even have this privilege we pay a lot of school tax to district expecting them to do a good job they should be responsible and we should make them accountable after serious consideration our family decided to pull our daughter out of mce last year we joined a fantastic local homeschool group last year when others are busy talking about is the boy or girl is a girl boy they are learning parts of atmospheres and seven wonders of the asian world when others are working on sending the boys to the girls locker room they are learning how to do the

077research thank you theresa all right last sentence all right theresa time is time is up so [Applause] i need to correct a couple of things teresa that you mentioned one is our rankings i have seen this over and over and that has been brought to my attention and i am going to correct that because the u.s news published the annual 2019 best high school rankings which ranked for the first time every eligible public high school in the nation so what does that mean it means that they altered the ranking system to include every eligible public high school in the nation that's 17 800 schools okay prior to that they were only ranking 2700 schools so when i hear the rankings i have the research i can forward that to you so please reach out to

078me via email and i will forward that to you thank you no it's no it's not dropping it is not dropping and i will point that out to you [Applause] jeremy sure thank you um teachers who can't respect their students pronouns should not be teaching i don't want those teachers in my school [Applause] i don't want them teaching my kids whether my kids are cis non-binary or trans i want them to be able to figure that out on their own with support i think a lot of people who are cis and heterosexual don't understand the concept of the safe space and that when kids are in school and their pronouns are not respected school is not safe for them and i'd like people who [Music] are not familiar with this concept of the safe space

079to think about how it would feel if the student not the teacher we're not worried about the safety of teachers here worried about the safety of kids right kids i'll say it again kids who cannot feel safe at school because half the people in this room are clapping for transphobia all right well you just clap for that speech and that was classic transphobia we're addressing the board not the audience the audience give respect to the speaker please privilege of the floor affecting everybody here go ahead well there are going to be many speakers ahead of me and their speakers jeremy continue please okay i'll respond to that because someone just raised the concept of pedophilia all right this is what you're going to be hearing because if the door is open right if we talk

080about generally oh there are mean people on social media and people shouldn't be mean right then you know what's going to keep happening you're going to keep hearing people calling people pedophiles because they support giving dignity and respect to kids who are trans or non-binary all right that's what's going to keep happening you as the board you have the power to close the door on this and we're watching to see if you do it thanks thank you jeremy i i guess i i just want to just back up a minute and and the people that are in this room right now you're here for a reason right you you have um you what you feel is the best interest of your kids and your your children what we can't do we can't um anyone can't

081come up um and speak and then um call names or have names called at them this is this is the stuff that we try to prevent at school there's diversity of a lot of things diversity of thought is a big one and i think that we if if nothing else i would just ask for the remaining part of our time here we respect each other it's a start because we're not going to solve everything here tonight but we can respect each other tonight so please respect each other as we move forward that happens again we will shut public comment down and that is my right lori like thank you i'm lori leicab six stone gate lane i want to thank the board of education for idiot reiterating your commitment to our lgbtqia students and families

082we appreciate the continued collaboration together toward our mutual goals the new york state pta executive director kyle bella kopitsky states new york state pta continues to be proud of the work our units across the state accomplish daily especially in the area of diversity equity and inclusion pittsford central ptsa offers a fantastic after school and enrichment program and their new rainbow club truly supports all students and is a great reflection of pta's work to make every child's potential a reality we applaud pittsford central ptsa for their commitment to their students and families and look forward to working with them and our other 250 000 members to support every child with one voice end quote as the pittsburgh ptsa we are currently working in close and respectful collaboration with the new york state pta and the pittsford

083central school district to clarify update and follow transparent processes together through continual improvement which we both value to support ptsa programs which improve include programs like the rainbow club and to continue to provide a wide range of options for our students we appreciate value and thank all the volunteers who have worked so many hours on this for our students all of our volunteers deserve our respect we are all here tonight because we care about what is best for our students to find ways for students to belong and thrive in community together to grow up to be kind and respectful to build friends and strong relationships that will help them overcome the challenges they face in their lives feeling connected is important it is important to mental health it is important to fostering community and it

084is important so that we can feel safe to learn and grow we want our students to feel connected and heard i imagine everyone here wants that i know you as the board of education our district and our ptsa all value collaboration to prioritize opportunities for our students to feel connected our ptsa optional after-school enrichment program is for students to connect and grow together through all of its offerings and it is also one of the many ways we as ptsa support our shared commitment to the mission to prepare our students to be their best to do their best and make a difference in the lives of others thank you thanks gloria kelly galvin good evening my name is kelly gavin i live at 10 concord drive so i was really impressed with the budget presentation and

085the things that struck me were the words whole child and including equity and inclusion and i really appreciated assistant superintendent's statement that a budget is the story of the future based on facts of the past i think that's true of so many things that the board does that you're building the story of the future and in that story we've seen some contentious things there are ways to avoid some of that contentiousness one of them is building shared vocabulary shared vocabulary is something that builds collaboration that allows people to work together this is something that's understood by companies like starbucks who we all know have the vocabulary of their menu disney imagineers we all know that language and we're able to relate to that nature and the australia asian medical journal also have shown that shared

086vocabulary builds collaboration and community and you avoid some of the nastiness that we've seen if you're able to do that so i ask the board to support activities for our children that will continue to build shared vocabulary and the ability to communicate and collaborate in ways that are productive i'm the parent of a non-binary kid a non-binary kid who has been bullied ruthlessly in our schools but supported so beautifully by administration and by teachers and that modeling is so important to their well-being and the more that we can build that vocabulary and that shared understanding the better experience my child will have all the way through their schooling thank you for supporting that sort of environment for my kid and for all kids who are struggling thanks kelly drew mocras i hope i'm pronouncing that

087correctly um hello my name is drew mocras i'm at 11 burnley rise my pronouns are he him i am a ptsa member and i'm also a board member on the pittsford education foundation and i am a parent of a kindergartner who participated in rainbow club at thornell road this winter i'm here today to speak in support of rainbow club and i asked the district to approve it in a fair and timely manner and also ask the district to speak out strongly as the board just did against the hatred we've seen leveled against the rainbow club in recent weeks like many i was dismayed by the awful accusations of racism and bullying that in pittsford that we all read about in the media last year one of the positive things that the district did back then

088in response was to host listening circles to gather feedback from parents on how to improve my family participated in one of these circles and we urged the district to find more ways to proactively combat intolerance and foster belonging among students from all walks of life rather than just react when ugly incidents occur we want pittsford to be known as a welcoming place and the decisions made here do so much to ensure that that continues in the future my daughter frannie was excited to do rainbow club as her winter after school activity in rainbow club she listened to great new books and got to see other kids and grown-ups reinforce how important it is to be respectful to people who may be different from you everything on the rainbow club reading list was entirely age-appropriate when

089i asked her the other day about rainbow club she told me they don't just talk about gender identity they also talk about being kind and welcoming and supportive i started a new job last fall and while meeting new co-workers i was happy to see a tradition of people stating their personal pronouns during introductions i told franny about this and also told her about how one of my new co-workers said that they use they them pronouns and without missing a beat frannie turned to me and said oh does that mean they're non-binary and she's only five um i was so proud seeing my thoughtful kindergartner already so well equipped with the vocabulary to navigate a world where respect for gender expression is growing more commonplace thankfully rainbow club is exactly the kind of proactive step that

090we encourage the district to take back during those listening circles there are always going to be members of the lgbtqia plus community among our students and families in pittsford sadly members of this community are at higher risk of being bullied so everything we can do to show them they are respected here that they can live their lives with dignity and that they have allies is so meaningful and important please please continue to allow parents the option of sending their kids to rainbow club thank you my name is meredith graham i live at 21 northfield gate and in the interest of time i just like to say i fully support rainbow club if there are any students listening we care about you and we support you and um you know this has been a really difficult

091time for a lot of people and i'm glad that the board is so supportive and listening to all the different aspects that everyone has to say i appreciate it very much and congratulations darren thank you very much oh my pronouns are shifa thank you amyord okay hi my name is amy ord 15 sunrise i'm a parent of a kindergartner and i was a school psychologist before that who worked with lgbtqia kids and others struggling around that all students should feel included and like they belong we can help foster this by using age-appropriate material led by qualified instructors i have three questions regarding the rainbow club is the pta qualified to run a group like this these are really sensitive topics and having unlicensed people teaching this material poses risks of harm to children and ethical

092and legal risks to the pta and the school district my second question is it developmentally appropriate there's a big difference between kindergartners and fifth graders the state department of ed sets forth standards of what to teach and when i you can look up the family life and the sexual health standards for k 1 and 2 and up and there's a big misalignment between what rainbow club wants to introduce and what the state deems age appropriate to teach for example students in the buffalo area schools this week are just being introduced to these concepts in ninth grade such as what is lgbtq what's it stand for what is a gsa what is an alia ally the rainbow club is teaching this to kindergarteners the content of the club um you know just the kbc's uses confusing

093terminologies and tells kids if they like both boys and girls they might be bisexual if they only like their own gender they are gay or lesbian if they like everything they are pan others imply that biological girls who like to play in the mud are simply transgender boys this is confusing to young children we need to stop being so quick to apply labels and put everyone into groups these are developing children and they're in their most formative years these are complex topics and they're usually you know introduced more in high school and in middle school rainbow club from what i found in elementary schools are usually very rare usually the parents attend with them it's sometimes in a community center and it's more of a play group or a social group i found one in

094the whole new york city public school district and that was led by a certified counselor never the pta my third question is there potential harm to children kids are easily influenced from authority figures media and peers kids want to please their teachers they want to say the right words and do the right things to get praise kids also talk i know kids are talking about rainbow club that aren't even in rainbow club and the things they are saying they don't clearly understand the concepts that have been introduced to them children come to school with various backgrounds and abilities to deal with these topics for example kids with special education needs you know kids with autism are seven times more likely to struggle with gender and sexual confusion they have difficulties reading social cues taking things

095very literal you don't want to put the idea into the head of a young autistic thank you amy the time's up elizabeth roth hi um i'm elizabeth oh i'm going to take this off sorry i'm elizabeth roth 40 broke drive um i don't know if sadie is going to get up to come and talk um but she's got a beautiful beautiful letter here from her son who attends rainbow club with my daughter and franny um and if we don't get time to read it we'll make sure that we get that to you um because it's a really beautiful narrative on rainbow club um i'd like to take an issue with a couple of things that have been said tonight um the first is actually i'd like to praise that in the budget proposal today that

096i was really heartened to see equity and inclusion mentioned in several different places in the curriculum budget in the resource budget you talked about hiring for another social emotional learner rainbow club is all about social emotional learning but in a supportive completely optional manner i would like to fully commend and get behind the parents who stood up to run this club not knowing that this was what they were going to face um at the end of it they were fully approved by roger de bell so that was one of the things i'd like to take issue at it was it made it sound um ms apparel in your um remarks as though rainbow club would some kind technically gone under the table and hadn't been approved it went through the full process at thornell school

097and sadie and the other facilitators were fully approved they went through through background checks and all of the steps that needed to make the club run i would like to also then point out that rainbow club is the only new club that has been paused there is a new eco club at thornell school that has not been paused for the spring semester so we really need to look at where our unconscious bias is coming into the process and where right now we have a club on hold due to a potentially controversial difficult topic i ask that you accelerate the review and the approval of the club and that you fully stand up for the lgbtqi students and the allies one of which is my daughter who attended and then finally the final thing i wanted

098to just take a little bit of issue with is earlier today and i fully commend that you identified that we all bring different things to the table and enlisting diversity you talked of people of color gender often at work we talk about veterans you mentioned people with different abilities people on spectrums different types of learners the one word you did not use was lgbtqia plus and that was the topic in everyone's hearts today so like other teachers i ask that you stand forward and really denounce the hate speech that we've started to see and show that you are behind as as we are as parents our lgtbqia plus students and that we have their back they don't feel safe they get bullied they are more at risk for suicide and mental health issues we have

099to go further for them than we do for our other students in some respects and that starts in kindergarten making sure that from day one on that playground they have a safe space thank you thanks elizabeth andrew evans hi my name is andrew evans i live at 66 meadow cove road i have three kids at school in the district one seventh and two ninth graders and i'm here tonight to speak on behalf of the efforts put behind the rainbow club and the collaborative nature by with parents teachers school administration and hopefully an understanding of the the board such as yourselves and the goals and the initiatives behind this this project you know again it's about building awareness and inclusivity um i fully respect people's decisions to participate or not participate i can tell you that

100my own children probably would not as far as i can tell have participated in this activity i might not have had the awareness to suggest that they participate in this activity but within a few years one of my children has educated me about what inclusivity means what understanding social emotional development is and my child who's currently now a 7th grader at hawkins road has you know radically changed my understanding i just want to quote his words tonight when he learned about the brouhaha that was brewing over this topic almost every lgbtq kid in my son's school has been called names and bullied about their identity and their pronouns so he identifies a whole group of kids who are systematically being abused right by their peers and so i think that this is and that's in

101the middle of middle school and so i think we're talking about initiatives to change that and i just want to speak out in support of that i want to thank the board for considering it i want to just support again a collaborative process between our teachers our parents our administration um and that's it i really i give the rest of the time i think to the large number of people who came out here the last thing i wanted to say to uh to superintendent pirro's notion about this is thankfully as i completely shun and avoid all social media uh i learned about none of this through that circuit but you know it's really just through the communication of people who care up and down my street and in my kids schools so thank you thanks

102susan gould give me one second can i just say something about the asep that is totally unrelated or i actually wrote the original policies of the after-school enrichment program in 2008 and i would be happy i don't know where it got lost in the line but there was a whole chain of command that was written as these programs started to expand so i don't know what happened here but i do want to let you know and maybe it had to do with the schools being closed for two years so there was a whole thing and i think maybe it just got lost in translation so i i read what they have and it's pretty close to what we had written you know 12 years ago so thank you to whoever went re-back to it to

103make it fair for everybody so anyway my name's susan gould 35 carriage court i'm here to speak about the dropping of some of the honors programs schools around the nations are canceling advanced placement courses and eliminating honors programs in the name of equity they're doing away with homework deadlines attendance requirements test scores we're told these changes will make the schools more inclusive for those who are underperforming sadly it seems pittsford has fallen prey to this way of thinking too dismantling the school meritocracy is insane it robs students especially children from low income and immigrant households of their best chance to get ahead parents at a school in down state were just notified that the school's ap calculus course no longer meets the college board standards students taken the course to prepare for the exam and

104apply to college have now been sabotaged attacking honors and ap courses and exams is happening everywhere but it's a nonsensical approach to a serious problem the racial gap in student performance one thing i'd like to know is what gap is in the pittsford schools and why the decision to eliminate honors classes was made without parent and student input most honors and ap courses come near the end of a student's public school experience attacking these courses are devastating to students from all backgrounds who are counting on their hard work and talent to pave their way into a competitive college the answer to this gap shouldn't be to sabotage the end of a student's academic achievement by eliminating opportunities they have worked towards the answer is to prepare disadvantaged students in the early grades i just want

105to finish off is pittsford saying the honors level students will have an honors level curriculum at the regents level classes i don't see that in the course catalog in other academic areas of study there's a clear distinction between the two if so does that mean students suddenly are going to be accelerated is the expectation that all students will be expected to perform at a higher level or will we see an inflation of grades to help accommodate those students will we see a lessening of standards to help all students succeed even if that means sacrificing the true meaning of education i'm skipping ahead i'm just want to give you the last thing in school it used to say equity there was a specific definition for equity it used to be in all the elementary schools it

106said it doesn't mean giving every child the same thing it means giving them what they need i'm asking you please continue to give these students what they need thank you so that concludes public comment i apologize to those of you who would like to speak but i do think that we covered the topic i tried to look at all of the different remarks and tried to bucket them into categories so that's how i went through that and again i just want to mention that all of the 81 responses that we received online will be posted and you'll have access to them thank you so much for joining us this evening may i have a motion to adjourn please thanks ted thanks robin all in favor opposed motion carried you